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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

No, 25 



Editors: 

The Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, 

M.A., F.B.A. 
Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D. 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. Sir J. ARTHUR THOMSON, 

M.A. 
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, 

M.A. 



A complete classified list of the volumes of The 
Home University Library already published will be 
found at the back of this book. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



FREDERIC CPAXSON 

U 
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 

OF WISCONSIN 

Author of ^^The Independence of the South American 
Republics^'' ^^The Last American Frontier'''' 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

LONDON 
THORNTON BUTTERWORTH. LTD. 



^ 






Copyright, 1911, 

BY 

flEENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 






CONTENTS 

CHAP. FAOB 

I The Law of the Land . . ^ . • • . . 11 

II Secession 25 

III Abraham Lincoln 39 

IV Civil War 54 

V Afloat and Abroad 79 

VI 1862: McClellan and Emancipation ... 92 

VII 1862: The Mississippi Valley 115 

VIII Ulysses S. Grant 135 

IX Gettysburg and Reconstruction 160 

X The Balance of Power 186 

XI The Union Party 209 

XII The Confederate Collapse 232 

Bibliographical Note 251 

Index 253 



LIST OF MAPS 

PAGE 

I The United States in 1860 36 

II Railroads of the United States, 1861-1865 . 57 

III The Seat of War in the East 93 

IV The War in the West 114 



PREFACE 

It is the attempt of this book to show that the 
Civil War was more than a succession of battles; 
that it was a struggle between two civilizations, 
each the logical result of its environment, and each 
endeavoring to work out the best American interest 
as it saw it. That of the two civilizations, one 
was reactionary, and opposed to both the humani- 
tarian sentiments of the nineteenth century and 
the economic profit of the race, is quite as true as 
the fact that honesty and intelligence were about 
evenly divided in the contest. The motive for 
secession, slavery, was indefensible in the long run, 
but men brought up with that institution believed 
in it, and were led by it to believe that the Con- 
stitution had not created a nation, — a position 
in which they were contradicted by the facts of 
industry and the law of the land. On both counts, 
slavery and secession, American history must 
adjudge the South to have been mistaken. 

It is reasonably clear to-day, that the South 
would of hei'self have discarded slavery in another 
generation ; that the New Nationalism would have 



X PREFACE 

come about without the Civil War. Yet the war 
dominated in the American mind for forty years, 
and is worthy of study if only on this account. 

The reader of this book is ui-ged to study the 
campaigns with the map before him. The larger 
strategy of the Civil War was simple and direct, 
but, without a map, it will remain incompre- 
hensible. 

The writer of the book is indebted to innumer- 
able fore-runners, who have re-fought the battles 
on paper, and disputed controverted points. The 
limits of a preface do not permit all the acknowl- 
edgments that he would like to make. But the 
greatest of his debts is one which he, in common 
with every other student of the Civil War, owes 
to the profound, judicial, and enlightened pages 
of James Ford Rhodes, 

Madison, Wisconsin, 

August, 1911, 



THE CIYIL WAR 

CHAPTER I 

THE LAW OF THE LAND 

After more than fourscore years of storm 
and calm, of war and politics, of trying 
hardships and yet more trying prosperity, 
the United States remained both independ- 
ent and united in 1860. In commerce as 
in government it had managed, one way 
and another, to hold together and to grow. 
Through accretion and happy accident, 
rather than foresight or construction, it had 
attained a size and wealth surprising to its 
critics and overwhelming to its citizens. 
Only a few of these knew whence it had 
come or whither it was tending, yet in the 
souls of nearly all there burned a love of 
country and pride of performance that made 
the American a marked man wherever he 
appeared in the society of the world. 

The American Civil War was fought on 
both sides by men who had lived through a 
period of national adolescence. Their in- 
tellectual heritage was one. In the conduct 



12 THE CIVIL WAR 

of their affairs they showed the weaknesses 
as well as the strength of their experience. 
They were essentially American whether 
they were right or wrong. 

Only the calm judgment of posterity can 
determine which side was wrong. Few of 
the men who voted for or against Abraham 
Lincoln in 1860 knew enough real history 
to be influenced by it. What they thought 
was history they had taken from the lips of 
their statesmen, as they had read the speeches 
of Webster or Calhoun. The sources of their 
knowledge were themselves colored by the 
facts of the prolonged controversy that had 
given life to American politics for thirty 
years. Yet, after all, one side was right 
and one was wrong. Though advocates of 
either were frequently mistaken in their 
application of historic facts, though par- 
tisans of both were always more honest 
than informed, one side of the quarrel har- 
monized generally with the trend of human 
experience and the laws of economic and 
political evolution; the other was reactionary 
and as such condemned by time. 

Any explanation of the causes of the Civil 
War must take into account the forces which 
had made the American and the southern 
environments. Fundamental among those 
of the latter was the cultivation of the 
cotton plant, and the type of labor which it 
permitted. From the earliest days of Amer- 
ican colonization there had been divergent 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 13 

tendencies to separate the plantations of 
the southern seaboard from the farms of 
the Atlantic coast north of Delaware Bay. 
Climate, in the South, checked the physical 
activities of white men, whereas in the 
North it stimulated and invigorated them. 
The northern soil responded only to per- 
sistent and vigorous attack; the farm lands 
along the southern rivers invited the easy 
cultivation of a few staple crops. Every- 
where the question of labor supply was great. 
In a new country the invitation to work 
must always be more generous than the 
response of workers. But in North and South 
this invitation called for different answers. 

The northern laborer before 1830 was 
most likely to be a farmer, or to be con- 
nected in some way with agricultural en- 
terprise. The range of crops to which his 
labor could be applied was so wide that no 
single product dominated. All the year 
round he worked, in the fields or indoors at 
domestic manufactures. Turning from job 
to job, doing a dozen different tasks between 
sunrise and sunset, he succeeded best who 
had those traits which the term Yankee has 
come to signify — quick alertness, readi- 
ness of initiative, intelligence and compe- 
tence. Working by himself, and generally 
for himself, at tasks that called for close 
individual application, the northern laborer 
was the highest of his kind. The oppor- 
tunity which the New World offered for 



14 THE CIVIL WAR 

advancement quickened his intellect and 
inspired his exertions. Unless he was a 
Yankee he could not prosper. 

The southern climate and soil permitted 
the use of a different kind of labor from that 
which was essential to the North. Single 
crops, which could be cultivated by routine, 
could be grown over wide areas. It was not 
that individual application and industry 
could not succeed in the South, but that 
conditions allowed this industry to exploit 
a variety of labor that could not justify its 
existence in the North. Had half -civilized 
negro laborers been usable in the North, 
slavery would have flourished there, for 
labor was in high demand, and the average 
ethics of the seventeenth century saw noth- 
ing anomalous in a human chattel. But in 
the southern climate the low-class negro 
laborer adapted himself readily. Improvi- 
dent and incompetent he was, but under 
white direction, in a new and fertile land, he 
could be used to the profit of his owner. 
The plantation system, which is only the 
application of gang labor and routine tasks 
to agriculture, had already become a south- 
ern type before the American Revolution. 
The negro was held as a slave largely be- 
cause no other way was known to control 
barbarian laborers. The slave-owner was 
not yet troubled by logical deductions from 
the rights of man. 

At the beginning of the American govern- 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 15 

ment under the Constitution, in 1789, there 
was a difference existing between the labor 
systems of the northern and southern states; 
but there were many other differences among 
the sectionahstic and locaHstic states that 
were beheved to be more serious. "It is too 
probable that no plan we propose will be 
adopted," the most eminent American had 
admitted in 1787 when he confronted the 
task of finding a working basis for friendly 
relations among thirteen independent states. 
During the War of Independence, common 
interests had produced such similarity of 
result among the states that many have 
believed that they were then really united. 
During the years of the Confederacy diver- 
gent selfish interests reduced to complete 
incompetence the congress of ambassadors 
created by the Articles of Confederation. 
And when in 1789 the new Constitution was 
allowed to go into effect the doubters and 
scoffers were innumerable. The states, 
though resembling each other in language, 
government, and practices, were in fact in- 
dependent and jealous. They had been 
units as British provinces; and between 
1776 and 1789 they had developed so few 
economic interests that crossed state lines, 
that the convention, entrusting all these 
general interests to the new government, 
had summed them up in a single clause 
respecting commerce. 

The economic development of the United 



16 THE GIVIL WAR 

States after 1789, is a part of that great in- 
dustrial revolution that has re-made nearly 
every government of modern Europe. In 
America population multiplied and spread. 
Crossing the Alleghanies the pioneers of the 
West erected new states which, one by one, 
were admitted to the Union until in 1860 
the original thirteen had been enlarged to 
thirty-three. The western commonwealths 
perpetuated the ideas and economic institu- 
tions of their eastern predecessors. Follow- 
ing climatic lines, the territories of the 
Northwest found their prosperity in free 
labor, and had been so manifestly predeter- 
mined in this that Congress had been able 
in 1787 to respond to a new humanitarian 
sentiment and forbid slavery, forever, in 
the Old Northwest. The Southwest throve 
on the cotton crop, made ever more im- 
portant by the invention of the gin, the 
sewing machine, and the application of steam, 
and continued the exploitation of negro labor 
on the plantation in the culture of that 
staple. 

The minute localism of interests which 
had characterized the American states in 
1789 was in part destroyed by 1830. One 
group of states, possessing climatic similarity 
and geographic propinquity, had acquired a 
common quality that gave to it weight in 
the counsels of the nation out of proportion 
to its population or wealth. The northern 
states remained individualistic and often 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 17 

antagonistic, but south of Pennsylvania and 
the Ohio River, every state possessing the 
plantation system and slave labor felt its 
closeness to its neighbors in the common 
jealousy of anything which might injure the 
value of its slave property. The South had 
become a section that in many ways forgot 
state lines. Its representatives in Congress 
voted as a unit. The philanthropic notions 
of the nineteenth century aroused its fears 
and antagonisms. Vitally interested in the 
property which its economic situation had 
allowed it to accrue, it could see no good in 
social movements that threatened the per- 
manence of its vested rights. 

Economic unity, based upon slave labor, 
had come to the South before 1830. Such 
unity, over a large portion of the United 
States, had not been anticipated by the f ram- 
ers of the Constitution whose experience had 
been with the centrifugal forces of local 
rivalry. Once recognized, however, it gave 
to the states involved such an advantage in 
federal affairs that they were able to control 
the government. After twenty years of 
this control, they had come to believe them- 
selves entitled, as of right, to direct those 
national policies which an accident of eco- 
nomics had thrown into their hands. 

In the twenty years after 1830, while the 
South was exulting in its dominance over 
Congress, the northern states underwent a 
unifying process, and became the North. 



18 THE CIVIL WAR 

Here, as in the South, it was the trend of 
business that produced unity. There, a 
common method of production gave rise to 
a community of interests that was intensi- 
fied when the rest of the world repudiated 
slavery. Interchange of wares destroyed 
the localism of the North. 
I The Allegheny Mountains were both an 
obstacle and an encouragement to the eco- 
nomic development of the North. So long as 
they were crossed only by narrow and devious 
wagon paths, they prevented any large ex- 
change of commodities. They were but a 
slight obstruction to the South, which passed 
them and found on their western slopes 
rivers flowing easily into the Gulf of Mexico 
and providing abundant routes to a market 
for their products. But they were a real 
barrier between the Northeast and the 
Northwest. The latter region found that it 
was limited to the markets reached by the 
tedious courses of the St. Lawrence or the 
Mississippi. It coveted the trade of the 
populous eastern states, and this desire 
caused it to press for roads across the moun- 
tains. Turnpikes, useful but inadequate, 
were built, used, and discarded for canals; 
while these in turn were superseded by the 
railroad just as soon as steam was brought 
under control. 

During the two decades in which the South 
was convincing itself that cotton was king, 
and was rushing its crop to a receptive 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 19 

world by the water routes that nature had 
provided, the North and Northwest were 
strugghng with grades and tunnels, cuts and 
embankments. Before 1840 railroads scarcely 
diverted the streams of American trade. 
In the next ten years the trunk lines climbed 
the Alleghenies. During the fifties, 10,000 
miles of railway were opened in the Old 
Northwest alone, and every farmer north 
of the Ohio could ship direct to tidewater 
on the Atlantic. It was not a habit or a 
system of labor that produced the economic 
unity of the North in contrast to that of the 
plantation South. It was a physical amal- 
gamation that suddenly appeared between 
1850 and 1860, and it was based upon 20,000 
miles of railway track which defied the sec- 
tionalism of geography. 

From 1830 to 1850 the united South con- 
trolled the policies of the United States. 
Few even of its leaders foresaw the economic 
trend of the North. The quick changes of 
the fifties, operating everywhere in the United 
States, but most strikingly in the free states, 
where capital was mobile and was not tied 
up in an owned labor supply, came as a 
shock to the South, which had long been a 
united section and which did not abandon 
hope of permanent control until after 1860. 

The conditions of 1789, in which each 
state lived by and for itself, had forever 
passed away by 1860. Even in the South 
independence by states was out of the ques- 



m THE CIVIL WAR 

tion. The railway net, and the growing 
industriaHsm of society demanded govern- 
ment of a type not foreseen when, in 1789, 
the states forswore their sovereignty and 
entered the Union. The development of 
the national government was inevitable. 
Had the Constitution been as the southern 
leaders persuaded themselves it was, there 
must have been revolution or wholesale 
amendment to adapt it to modern life as 
shaped by machinery and steam transporta- 
tion. Happily, however, it was adequate to 
the needs of the nineteenth century, and 
the odium of revolutionary attempt falls 
upon the section that tried to construe it 
so as to turn back the hands of time. 

The Constitution had been adopted as an 
experiment. Many believed that it was too 
rigorous for liberty to survive under it. 
Others lamented the absence of a more 
strongly centralized machine. It was a 
compromise, reached by a convention that 
sat in secret, and ratified as the last hope 
of avoiding anarchy and dissolution. That 
commercial growth should in less than a 
century weld the thirteen rival states, and 
twenty more, into an industrial unit was not 
anticipated by even the wilder enthusiasts 
of federalism. Many of the framers would 
probably have admitted that, if the experi- 
ment should fail to work, the states could 
resume their former independence. Yet 
they had inserted in the document phrases 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 21 

whose ratification destroyed the possibility 
of rupture of the new Union by anything 
short of revolution. "This Constitution, 
and the Laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof," the 
sixth article runs, "shall be the supreme 
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every 
State shall be bound thereby, anything in 
the Constitution or Laws of any State to the 
Contrary notwithstanding." To the courts 
created by the Constitution was assigned 
judicial power extending "to all Cases, in 
Law and Equity, arising under this Consti- 
tution, the Laws of the United States, and 
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under 
their Authority." Without catching the 
attention of most of its contemporaries a 
new nation had come into being with all the 
power necessary to maintain itself. Within 
the limits of its delegated authority, concern- 
ing whose extent its own supreme court was 
to be the final judge, the nation was supreme. 
In the years following 1789 one state after 
another became discontented with its treat- 
ment under the Constitution, and in bad 
temper denied its obligation to submit to 
federal exaction. But every time a local 
grievance produced its protest the weight 
of the disinterested states stifled it. As 
business came gradually to the courts of the 
United States, these accepted freely the 
doctrine that the Constitution had become 
the law of the land. When Calhoun, realiz- 



22 THE CIVIL WAR 

ing the essential sectionalism which slavery 
gave to the South, announced again the 
doctrine of secession as a remedy within the 
Constitution, Webster found, in all the dis- 
interested states, lawyers and laymen to 
follow him when he made his ringing plea 
for "Liberty and Union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable! " 

After 1830, southern leaders continued in 
general adherence to the Calhoun theory of 
the right of the state to refuse to obey what 
it believed to be unconstitutional laws. The 
cotton fields spread out of the old South into 
the Southwest, and the glamour of the great 
plantation owners' wealth concealed the 
undesirable position of the low class whites 
and the absence of that social uniformity 
which was the triumph of the North. From 
the knowledge that slave labor was personally 
profitable to the favored class it was easy 
to develop a plausible argument that it was 
profitable to the society that employed it, 
although in the whole South only about 
one person in ten owned any slaves, and 
fewer than 12,000 owned as many as 50, in 
1860. It was forgotten that listless, incom- 
petent labor is dear even when employed 
without a wage. Until the railway appeared, 
with its large demand for free capital for 
investment, the South could not see the fact 
that it was bound to a system that forbade 
change in method or adaptation to the con- 
ditions of modern life. The men who proi- 



THE LAW OF THE LAND 2S 

ited by the institution had made themselves 
into an aristocracy that controlled the poli- 
tics as well as the business of their section, 
and whatever threatened their interests was 
treason to the social order. In the national 
government they met each step against 
slavery with threats of dissolution of the 
Union, but in no case before 1860 were they 
compelled to carry out their threat, since 
their compact unity controlled Congress. 
The North had passed the South in both 
population and wealth; being free itself, it 
had come to dislike slavery; and not sharing 
in the profits of slavery it had been able to 
develop a public opinion antagonistic to it. 
But until the trunk line railways were done 
in the early fifties, it had no political unity 
that could give its opinions weight. The 
generation of Webster passed away, leaving 
behind in the North a new generation that 
had declaimed his reply to Hayne in their 
school days, and had grown up to see an 
indestructible Union, in law, become one in 
economic fact. Until 1854 every time the 
South faced Congress with the alternatives 
of concession to slavery or secession, it carried 
its point against the disorganization of the 
northern states. Before the end of the fifties, 
the changing North became a nation that 
must one day refuse to be scared by the 
bogey of disunion, and stand its ground on 
the hard facts of economics and law. From 
the beginning, the Constitution had been 



m THE CIVIL WAR 

the supreme law of the land. Under it, a 
majority was entitled to rule. Before 1860 a 
united nation, bound unbreakably by the 
irons of 30,000 miles of railway and nearly 
independent of sectionalism that was based 
on geographic accident, lived under the 
Constitution and was prepared to test its 
strength. 



CHAPTER II 

SECESSION 

The rise and growth of the Republican 
party is the measure of the reahzation on 
the part of the North that it had a unity as 
well as a political purpose. For many years 
Lundy, Garrison, Channing, and Parker had 
preached against the slavery which the North 
had outgrown. Exasperating to the South, 
and ineffective in the North, the new gospel 
was the work of individuals and produced 
no reaction that could check the annexa- 
tion of Texas, the conquest of Mexico, the 
opening of the territories to slavery, or the 
repeal of the Missouri compromise. Both 
great parties. Whig and Democrat, feared 
the loss of the southern vote. Their leaders 
repeatedly professed themselves to believe 
that the rising question was settled. Re- 
gardless of party lines, southern politicians 
voted with unerring vision when sectional 
interests were involved. But in the year 
in which the first Chicago railway reached 
the Mississippi there was born a party of 
opposition to the continued exactions of the 
South. 

25 



26 THE CIVIL WAR 

The opening of the railways was followed 
by hopeful speculation throughout the North. 
Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, 
and St. Louis struggled among themselves 
for the control of the markets of the East. 
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 
Boston sent their agents out to secure the 
markets of the West. New activities and 
general prosperity are recorded in the com- 
mercial journals of the fifties. Close upon 
these, intellectual and political enthusiasms 
followed. Every mile of track increased 
the weekly range of the New York Tribune. 
Unity in trade relations became the founda- 
tion of an approach to uniformity in con- 
viction and action. The deep emotions 
aroused among individuals when Douglas, 
in 1854, directed the organization of Kansas 
and Nebraska, and opened the territories to 
slavery, came at a time when newspapers 
were circulating with a new ease, and men 
in the North were becoming conscious of 
their political weight. 

The Kansas-Nebraska law, passed in May, 
1854, repealed the Missouri compromise and 
organized two territories, whose status as 
to slavery or freedom should be regulated in 
the future by their occupants. Before it 
was signed, resistance to its fundamental 
premise had appeared throughout the North. 
On July 13, the anniversary of the great 
Northwest ordinance of 1787, numerous 
mass meetings denounced the repudiation of 



SECESSION 27 

a sacred compromise. In the autumn elec- 
tions, a new party showed itself able to break 
down, here and there, a party line. In every 
month after July, 1854, the new party, 
named Republican, became stronger and 
more clearly defined throughout the North 
as a sectional party, favoring opposition to 
the sectional policy of the South that had 
won every important division for nearly 
thirty years. 

In 1856 the Republican party entered upon 
its first national campaign. It was too weak 
to hope for success; leaders of assured repu- 
tation were yet unready to imperil their 
future by accepting its nominations. Made 
of men of diverse antecedents, with no 
common bond save the desire to restrict the 
extension of slavery, it was forced to feel 
its way among the old issues. It contented 
itself with a candidate no more important 
than John C. Fremont, whose title to fame 
was his service as an explorer, and whose 
meagre abilities were ever to be over-exploited 
by his better half, a daughter of Thomas Hart 
Benton of Missouri. Yet the new party 
carried eleven northern states and polled a 
third of the popular vote. Fremont was 
defeated by James Buchanan, an elderly 
northern Democrat, backed by the united 
South; but the old Whig party was almost 
extinguished and the Republicans now took 
their place as one of the two great party or- 
ganizations. Thus far they had been a party 



28 THE CIVIL WAR 

of idealists; hereafter the practical politician 
gained more than a foothold among them. 

In the next four years the sectional char- 
acter of the controversy became more clear. 
Forgetful that it had been the first to estab- 
lish a permanent sectionalism in politics, 
the South denounced the sectional character 
of the "Black Republicans." Bad temper, 
which had always been associated with the 
slavery struggle, became worse. Ignorance 
of the motives and character of the Republi- 
cans, on the part of the South, was exceeded 
only by the northern ignorance of the ca- 
pacity of the negro and the temper of the 
slave-holder. The greatest test of popular 
government must always come when the 
constitutional majority is separated from 
the minority by a geographic line. When 
parties are intermingled over the same area 
the majority always knows the minority too 
well to be unduly harsh. But sectional 
parties are separated by a gulf of ignorance 
which no charity can bridge, and either side 
is willing and anxious to believe the worst of 
its opponent. Thoroughly American on 
both sides, devoted to the Union as they knew 
it and the ideals that flourished in their 
sections, the North and South came to face 
an issue in which one must triumph and the 
other surrender. Henry Clay had outlived 
the period of compromises and now a con- 
solidating North could no longer yield. 

The platform of the Republicans was clear 



SECESSION 29 

in 1856. Its leaders were yet to be developed 
from the three classes of men who acted with 
the party. Mature Democrats and mature 
Whigs abandoned their old relations, in their 
opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska meas- 
ures. To these were added young men, who 
had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as youths, 
and who came to their first vote in 1856 or 
1860. Most prominent of the leaders who 
took up the new fight was William H. Seward, 
former governor of New York, enthusiastic, 
vigorous, and plausible, whose best known 
phrase gave name to the "irrepressible con- 
flict." Next to Seward was Governor Salmon 
P. Chase of Ohio, once a Democrat, of solid 
legal knowledge and first-rate administra- 
tive ability, who fell short of greatness only 
through his touch of personal ambition. 
After these came the lesser lights, inspired 
by principle or hope of profit. Some were 
spoilsmen who abandoned sinking ships, 
others were abolitionists whose radical ideas 
found too little play within the new organi- 
zation. One of them was a western poli- 
tician, no longer young and without great 
prominence, whose right to leadership was 
slowly established during the administration 
of James Buchanan. 

Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, had endeared 
himself to his associates, but had made no 
impression upon the United States in 1856. 
He was a country lawyer, brought up on a 
raw frontier, deprived of formal schooling. 



30 THE CIVIL WAR 

and making only a moderate success at his 
profession, when he left his office to cam- 
paign for the Republican party. He might 
never have passed beyond the activities of 
a local politician had not chance thrown 
him against a more successful citizen of 
his state, who had established himself as 
the leader of the Democrats. Stephen A. 
Douglas lifted Lincoln into the national vis- 
ion. Fighting the Kansas-Nebraska principle, 
Lincoln was ever on the trail of Douglas, the 
author of the bill. In 1858 they were both 
engaged in a contest over a legislature which 
was to choose a senator to fill Douglas's 
seat. After the custom of the time they 
toured the state, speaking in joint debates 
which failed to defeat Douglas for re-elec- 
tion, but which clarified the issues, and made 
the aims of both great parties clear and 
unmistakable. In these debates Lincoln, 
as a speaker and popularizer, impressed the 
news correspondents who had come west to 
report the speeches of Douglas. The Repub- 
lican party found his arguments their best 
campaign material. With good temper, 
simplicity, and logic he stated the theories 
of majority rule, and expressed his belief 
that slavery would cease to exist. For the 
federal government he claimed only a single 
right: to exclude slavery from any of the 
territories of the United States. Over these, 
he maintained that Congress had ample 
power. The Dred Scott decision, which 



SECESSION 31 

denied this power, he criticized as bad law, 
while he pledged his party to unswerving 
opposition to any variety of slavery extension. 

Among the Republicans, Lincoln was a 
moderate. Though believing slavery wrong, 
he denied any power in Congress to limit or 
abolish it within the states. The aboli- 
tionists thought him impervious to the ethical 
question. He was regarded as too radical 
by the practical politicians of his party be- 
cause he frankly attacked the law of the Dred . 
Scott case and explicitly stated his desire to 
abolish slavery in the territories. If any one 
had cared to note it, he might have seen that, 
in his personal judgments, Lincoln was not 
censorious, that he had no disposition to 
denounce the slave-holder but was content 
to fight the issue. 

Up to the meeting of the Republican con- 
vention, in June, 1860, few foresaw that 
Lincoln would secure the nomination, and 
those few were generally engaged in manag- 
ing his campaign. The newspaper lists of 
possible candidates rarely included his name, 
but the disabilities of the reputed candidates 
were quite as important for him as his own 
qualities. Though an old Whig, he had been 
too obscure to arouse the antagonisms that 
headed off the other candidates for the nomi- 
nation. It was a disappointing shock to 
eastern Republicans when they learned that 
at Chicago their party had been induced to 
accept a candidate without experience, with 



32 THE CIVIL WAR 

little national reputation, and with standing 
chiefly as a man of words. But dissatisfied 
as many Republicans were, their unity was 
stronger than that of any other party in the 
impending campaign. 

The rise of the Republicans was contempo- 
rary with the breakdown of the Whigs and 
the schism of the Democrats, the last being 
partly the result of Lincoln's generalship. 
It was he who pointed out to the South that 
when Douglas spoke of popular sovereignty 
he meant what he said, — that popular 
sovereignty might mean rejection of slavery 
as well as its extension. To the South, which 
had accepted Douglas's doctrine as a means 
of extending slavery, this interpretation was 
disconcerting. The extremists repudiated 
both the doctrine and its author; the moder- 
ates clung to him. When the party met in 
national convention at Charleston, in April, 
1860, Douglas controlled the organization, 
but could not prevent a radical minority 
from bolting the convention. Panic-stricken, 
the convention adjourned to Baltimore, only 
to find the schism wider. Split for the first 
time, with John C. Breckinridge of Ken- 
tucky heading the bolters and Douglas as 
the nominee of the regulars, the Democrats 
offered victory to the better united Repub- 
lican party. This victory was made more 
certain when a fourth ticket, of conservative 
Constitutional Unionists, brought John Bell 
of Tennessee into the field. 



SECESSION 33 

The canvass of 1860 was attended by the 
same threats that had appeared in every 
previous slavery debate. Having only a mi- 
nority in the United States, the South had 
no hope of continuing its control if ever 
the real majority should become united; and 
with its party split, defeat at the polls now 
seemed inevitable. Talk of secession was 
frequent; if it failed to frighten the Repub- 
licans it was because it had been repeated 
too often. In November Lincoln was elected, 
and the South faced the alternatives of 
accepting him or making good its threats. 

Four days after the election of Lincoln 
South Carolina called a convention to face 
the crisis. That the Republican party would 
be content to restrict slavery in the territo- 
ries and leave it unmolested in the states, 
no southerner believed. The South preferred, 
instead, to think that John Brown was the 
true exponent of the Republican theory, 
and saw in his fanatical attempt at a servile 
revolt a forerunner of abolitionist control. 
In the prolonged fight the section had con- 
vinced itself that slavery was an economic 
good, to be preserved at any cost. The 
leaders now only had to lead, for behind 
them was a popular sentiment for secession 
that grew stronger every day. The South 
Carolina convention met on December 17, 
1860, and three days later, with popular 
applause, repealed the ordinance by which a 
similar convention had adopted the Consti- 



34 THE CIVIL WAR 

tution of the United States. It declared 
that South Carolina resumed her sovereign 
powers among the nations, issued a declara- 
tion of causes which, like the declaration of 
independence, justified the act, and published 
an address to the people of the slave-holding 
states. Then it adjourned to await the action 
of Congress and the South. There was no 
confusing of the issue and no doubt that 
slavery was the cause. Fear of aggression 
upon slavery had produced the resort to 
Calhoun's final remedy. 

Had all the slave-holding states followed 
the example of South Carolina it is doubtful 
if the Union could have been maintained. 
But in none was secession unanimous, while 
in some the Union sentiment was as strong 
as the devotion to slavery. In the lower 
South the movement was most intense. 
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, 
Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas fronted on 
the Atlantic and the Gulf, had seaports in 
abundance, and were the centre of the plan- 
tation system. Within their borders planta- 
tions were the largest and cotton culture was 
the most highly organized. If any communi- 
ties needed to hang together to save their 
slaves these did; and the time of their seces- 
sion was fixed only by convenience. During 
December and January their members in 
Congress worked out a program of co-oper- 
ation, in accordance with which the six 
other states of the lower South followed 



SECESSION 35 

South Carolina in repudiating the Consti- 
tution. By February 1, 1861, they had all 
acted, and interest was concentrated upon 
the states of a second group. 

Just north of the lower South came a tier 
of states less identified with the plantation 
system, having fewer slaves as well as a 
larger proportion of non-slave-holding whites. 
North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and 
Arkansas were doubtful. Had slavery been 
the only issue they might not have risked 
secession for it. But they, as their neighbors, 
had been taught for many years that the 
Union was a compact, terminable at will, 
upon suspicion of violation. The sovereign 
rights which all the states had possessed in 
1787 they believed still to exist, since none 
of their political teachers had dwelt heavily 
upon the maxim that "this Constitution . . . 
shall be the supreme Law of the Land." 
Fear of aggression upon slavery might not 
have moved them, but should coercive means 
be used to hold the lower South in the Union, 
such attack upon the cherished sovereignty 
of states was likely to drive them to secede. 

The four border states — Delaware, Mary- 
land, Kentucky, and Missouri — were still 
more lukewarm to slavery. Financial interest 
in slavery decreased steadily to the North, 
and these states, bordering upon free states, 
regarded slaves as only one among many 
forms of property. There was sufficient 
industrialism among them for them to have 



SECESSION 37 

a different view of the Union than prevailed 
south of the Potomac. What course they 
would follow was problematic until 1863. 
Both sides hoped to retain their support, 
while their uncertainty did much to shape 
the policies of Lincoln's first administration. 

On February 1, 1861, seven states had 
announced their withdrawal from the Union. 
Six of them met by their delegates in con- 
vention at Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb- 
ruary 4, to form a Constitution for the new 
Confederacy which they proposed to erect. 
Separatist though they were, they had no 
idea of maintaining severally their independ- 
ence. Their repugnance was not to union, 
but to a Union in which they constituted a 
minority. Their men of vision looked for- 
ward to a southern Confederacy embracing 
all the slave-holding states and perhaps 
including the states of the upper Mississippi 
Valley. They failed to see that the railroads 
had substituted artificial routes for the well- 
known natural highways of the Ohio and the 
Mississippi. But whether they enticed the 
Northwest from the Union or not, slavery 
was their fundamental basis. The "corner 
stone" of the new republic, said Alexander 
H. Stephens, its vice-president, was the great 
truth that the negro is inferior to the white 
man, and that slavery is his natural condition. 

The formation of the Confederate Consti- 
tution was an easy matter. In ability and 
experience its framers had no superiors in 



38 THE CIVIL WAR 

the South. They represented, not a con- 
spiracy of selfish traitors, but a popular 
uprising that had no doubts as to the right- 
eousness of the cause. Long familiarity with 
the procedure of state governments, of Con- 
gress, and the executive departments at 
Washington, made them able to adapt the 
old Constitution to the new needs in a few 
days. After they had affirmed the right to 
property in slaves, asserted the special doc- 
trine of state sovereignty, and forbidden the 
enactment of a protective tariff, there were 
few changes which they desired to make. 
When the provisional president, Jefferson 
Davis of Mississippi, undertook to put the 
new frame of government into operation, 
he found abundant administrative experi- 
ence ready to be drawn upon. On February 
18, the provisional government was formally 
inaugurated at Montgomery. Departments 
of state, treasury, war, navy, justice, and 
post office were speedily organized, and before 
a hand had been lifted to check secession, 
the new Confederate States of America 
existed as a state, — within or without the 
United States, as the event should prove. 



CHAPTER m 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

James Buchanan, fifteenth President of 
the United States, had been representative 
and senator, minister to the court of St. 
James and secretary of state, before he 
defeated John C. Fremont in 1856, and ac- 
ceded to the chief magistracy. Having much 
experience in pubhc affairs, great skill in 
local politics, and long association with the 
other leaders of the Democratic party, he 
had none of that ignorance which made 
many northerners unfair judges of the con- 
duct and motives of the southerner. His 
judicial temperament restrained him from 
emotional excess in either direction. He 
inclined to be affected more by the unre- 
strained inaccuracies of the abolitionists 
than by the ethical question of slavery. 
From long co-operation with the leaders of 
the South he had come to judge them kindly. 
His legal experience left him doubtful as to 
the coercive powers of the Union, and sym- 
pathetic with those who had been driven, he 
believed, to desperate and unjustifiable ex- 
tremes by the attack upon their social order. 

39 



40 THE CIVIL WAR 

Too old to create or execute vigorous policies, 
feeling keenly the unfairness of the attacks 
upon the South, construing the Constitution 
strictly in all its bearings, he was at the close 
of an unsatisfactory administration when 
the election of 1860 brought the downfall 
of his party and gave the national govern- 
ment over to the Republicans. 

Even if Buchanan had held an enlarged 
view of the power of the government, there 
is little that he could have done in the four 
months between the election and the inaug- 
uration of Lincoln. Congress was in session 
nearly all the time, with power to block at 
pleasure. Unless it enlarged the powers of 
the President, he could do nothing. Upon it 
rested the chief responsibility for providing 
the machinery for enforcing the laws, should 
they be violated. Yet it remained indifferent 
to this obligation, and until near the end of 
the session was actually under the influence 
of those southern leaders who were shortly 
to take their place at Richmond or in the 
field. Federal officials were resigning through- 
out the South, and when the Senate neg- 
lected to confirm the appointment of their 
successors, the President was helpless. Yet 
there is little that any Congress could have 
done to prevent secession. Until resistance 
to the law occurred, the pretended with- 
drawal from the Union had no standing either 
under or against the Constitution. Freedom 
to meet, to organize, to talk, were and had 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 41 

been dear to the American imagination. 
Even northern extremists would have been 
slow to give real grievance to the South by 
interfering with its freedom of expression, 
and many took the southern conduct so 
lightly that its possibilities were discounted. 

It was no new thing for the North to hear 
the South complain and threaten secession. 
The United States had become so callous 
to murmurings that had never materialized, 
that their repetition was undervalued in 1860 
by those who made as well as those who 
heard them. Until election day few north- 
erners believed that the South would fulfil 
its promise. If South Carolina did secede, as 
she had nullified in 1832, it was a fair guess 
that she would allow herself to be coaxed 
back into the Union and rewarded for her 
grumbling by a larger share of privilege. 
Even in the South there was little belief that 
it would be necessary to carry out the threat 
to its rigorous extreme. The North was 
thought to be timid or low-spirited. It 
would either yield the point, or allow seces- 
sion to occur without a fight. The individ- 
ual was rare on either side who counted on 
secession followed by a war. 

The first effect of the events of December, 
1860, and January, 1861, was as might have 
been foreseen. The northern extremist fell 
under a cloud. The abolitionist was charged 
with having caused the trouble. Democrats, 
old line Whigs, and even cautious Republicans 



42 THE CIVIL WAR 

took occasion to throw the blame where 
Buchanan threw it in his annual message, 
upon the "long-continued and intemperate 
interference of the Northern people with the 
question of slavery in the Southern States." 
In Congress the compromiser was in evidence. 
The responsibility for the failure of Con- 
gress to repeat the attempts of 1820 and 
1850 in a general slavery compromise, rests 
upon the shoulders of the president-elect. 
From the start the committees in both 
Senate and House of Representatives realized 
that no compromise could stand without the 
concurrence of those Republican leaders 
who were to have complete charge of the 
government after March 4, 1861. Some- 
what frightened by their success and the 
demonstration it had provoked from the 
South, these were disposed to yield, and 
accept amendments, guaranteeing slavery 
in the states and perpetuating it in a portion 
or all of the territories. Lincoln himself was 
willing to record in an amendment what he 
believed already to be the law, — that no 
interference with the domestic institutions 
of the states should be allowed. But when 
the southern congressmen, as the price of 
Union, demanded the territories, Lincoln, 
inexperienced country lawyer though he 
was, stood by the main platform of his 
party — the right of Congress to legislate 
over the territories and to exclude slavery 
therefrom — and refused to be moved by 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 43 

persuasion or menace. Unwilling to support 
any plan which curtailed this power, Lin- 
coln became responsible for the failure of 
the compromise, and, in a sense, made the 
decision that plunged the country into war. 
If slavery was right, and if the southern 
minority was justified in its determination 
to control or break the nation, he made a 
mistake. 

For three months. Congress worked over 
the forlorn hope of compromise; a peace 
convention deliberated in informal session; 
public opinion wavered from side to side; 
and the single sure and responsible group of 
men in the United States proceeded in the 
organization of the Confederacy. Buchanan 
believed that there was no power in the gov- 
ernment to check secession by force. Cer- 
tainly Congress had given him no aid. 
Tentative in his poHcies, a northern secre- 
tary resigned from his cabinet because he 
was too lenient; a Mississippian went out 
because he was too severe. Even on the 
immediate question of retaining United States 
property in the South, custom houses, forts, 
navy yards, and the like, his course was un- 
certain until nearly the end of his adminis- 
tration. He had no doubt as to his power in 
this detail, but held off from giving added 
provocation which might prevent a com- 
promise. Not unlike Webster, who in his 
old age made concessions to slavery to save 
the Union, Buchanan sacrificed his standing 



44 THE CIVIL WAR 

in popular repute to his belief that concilia- 
tion was as yet better than force. 

And so the spring of 1861 advanced, with 
indecision on every side except that of the 
Confederacy. Mr. Davis proceeded with the 
organization of his government but put off 
the day of conflict of jurisdiction as long as 
possible. The United States mails ran un- 
molested through the South until nearly 
the end of May. In the North there was no 
coherent public opinion in the first three 
months of the year. Leaders, most of them 
upset and nervous, ranged the whole dis- 
tance from coercion at any cost to thank- 
fulness at the riddance. Followers of the 
Confederacy came to believe that secession 
would be peaceable and that the new Presi- 
dent would not attempt to interfere. 

On March 4 Abraham Lincoln was in- 
augurated despite the predictions that he 
would be murdered or that the ceremony 
would be otherwise prevented. Since the 
election, he had remained quietly in his 
home in Springfield, listening to the ebb 
and flow of advice and opinion, but refraining 
from new utterances in public that might 
embarrass Buchanan or himself. It does 
not appear that he worked out any policy 
in detail. As time went on, men learned 
that he had no set rules of administration, 
but met his business, piece by piece, settling 
it as nearly in accord with his fundamental 
convictions as might be. When the editors 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 45 

asked what he proposed to do, he referred 
them to his speeches. He did not conceal 
from his intimates his behef that slavery 
was wrong. It was too late to prevent 
southerners from dwelling upon his most 
important public phrases: "I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved, — I do not expect the 
house to fall, — but I do expect that it will 
cease to be divided." And it was to be ex- 
pected that they would doubt the sincerity 
of his disclaimers of power in the govern- 
ment to touch slavery in the states. But 
although he refrained from public discus- 
sion, he placed himself in touch with all the 
elements in and out of his party. The sug- 
gestion that he ward off suspicion by taking 
into the cabinet a southerner or two, he 
followed up by a vain search for the honest 
southerner who would take the place. 
Modest and never opinionated, he sought for 
the men who could help him make a cabinet, 
regardless of their attitude towards himself. 
Yet he kept an open mind about some 
of his final selections until the eve of the 
inauguration. 

The fears of an interrupted inauguration 
proved unfounded. General Scott filled the 
capital with troops, and waited nervously 
while the ceremony progressed. What Lin- 
coln was to say, aroused as much interest 
as whether he would be allowed to say it; 



46 THE CIVIL WAR 

but whatever it should be, Stephen A. 
Douglas had determined that his own loyalty 
to the United States should be equally 
noticeable and pronounced. When the pres- 
ident-elect looked helplessly around the 
stand for a place to put his hat, his defeated 
rival reached out and held it while the in- 
augural was delivered. There was nothing 
sensational in the address and nothing new. 
Quietly and carefully Lincoln reiterated his 
pledges that he had "no purpose, directly 
or indirectly to interfere with the institu- 
tion of slavery in the States where it exists." 
But he went on to assure his fellow citizens 
that "in view of the Constitution and the 
laws the Union is unbroken, and to the ex- 
tent of my ability I shall take care, as the 
Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon 
me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully 
executed in all the States." It was clear 
from the tenor of his words that there could 
be no peaceable secession unless a divided 
opinion in the North should impede his 
actions. If the North should sustain him 
there must be a fight. 

The national government, whose direction 
Mr. Lincoln now assumed, was far from 
perfect and fell below the standard of the 
next generation. The idea of appointment 
for merit and the utility of expert service 
had not yet reached the popular mind. 
Every American citizen was still believed, 
in the rampant democracy of the middle- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 47 

century, to be fitted for any job he could 
get. Since the inauguration of Andrew 
Jackson each new administration had wit- 
nessed a federal house-cleaning, and a new 
distribution of the spoils of office. This 
substitution of new and inexperienced clerks 
for those of greater knowledge had often 
embarrassed administrations before 1860, 
when the change was only from one Demo- 
cratic regime to another of the same faith. 
A clean sweep was to be anticipated when 
the radical change from Democrat to Re- 
pubhcan took place, — so clean that a keen 
Irish journalist thought not a few of the 
federal officials in the South were quickened 
in their devotion to the Confederacy by their 
certainty of being dismissed from the service 
of the United States. Lincoln's cabinet 
revealed both the strength and the weakness 
of the prevailing system. 

William H. Seward was invited to become 
secretary of state. His high fitness for the 
post could not be questioned, and he came 
well within the tradition that this office, at 
least, must be filled by a man of parts. He 
was regarded, and regarded himself, as the 
real head of the Republican party, and had 
been defeated in the convention only by his 
over-prominence. In the cabinet he met and 
tested strength with another of the defeated 
factional chiefs, Chase of Ohio. 

Of the three strong men of the cabinet, 
Seward stood easily the head, and was a 



48 THE CIVIL WAR 

creditable appointment upon any theory. 
Salmon P. Chase had no qualifications for the 
treasury except his unquestioned loyalty, 
his power in the Northwest, and his good 
general ability. His appointment to the 
most technical post in the government was 
purely political, and was successful only by 
accident. Yet few of his contemporaries 
questioned the wisdom of placing a man 
unskilled in finance in charge of the intri- 
cate processes of national credit. That he 
succeeded is, after all, proof that the Ameri- 
can idea is not wholly wrong. His appoint- 
ment, indicating Lincoln's failure to connect 
special skill with specific duties, was far 
better than the first appointment to the war 
department. 

Simon Cameron, Mr. Lincoln's first secre- 
tary of war, was given his portfolio as the 
result of a political deal, apparently unau- 
thorized by the president-elect, but not 
shocking to the political ethics of 1860. 
In control of the Pennsylvania delegation, 
a "favorite son" before the convention, he 
had been bought off by the tender of a seat 
in the cabinet. His incapacity, if not worse, 
was notable even in a day of amateur ad- 
ministrators; and when he was permitted to 
resign, his chief filled his place with his 
third great secretary, Edwin M. Stanton. 
It made no difference to Lincoln that Seward 
and Chase had been his rivals, or that Stan- 
ton, a Union Democrat, had hated and de- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 49 

spised him. These were men of force and 
influence in a time when it was quite as im- 
portant to fill the government with men 
who could command a majority in the North 
as to run the government smoothly and 
economically. The other seats in the cabinet 
were distributed where they would do the 
most good, to citizens of Connecticut, In- 
diana, Missouri, and Maryland. The aim 
of the President was to unite all shades of 
Union sentiment that his main purpose 
might be carried out. Seward doubted the 
wisdom of the "compound cabinet.'' "I 
was at one time on the point of refusing,'* 
he wrote his wife, "nay, I did refuse for a 
time to hazard myself in the experiment." 

In the confusion resulting from the change 
of administration it was several weeks before 
definite action could be reached on any of 
the problems which Buchanan had handed 
over to his successors. New officers had to 
learn something of their work, the most 
pressing subordinate appointments had to 
be made, the cabinet had yet to find which 
of his leaders was the chief, and public 
opinion was still far from unity on any 
point. In legal power Lincoln was exactly 
where his predecessor had been, but Con- 
gress had gone home, to remain there for the 
long recess, and unless he invited it he had 
no immediate interference to fear. In the 
intervals between the visits of clamorous 
office-seekers he devoted himself to study 



50 THE CIVIL WAR 

of the existing situation and to sounding the 
political temper of the Union. 

The retention of the public property of 
the United States presented the earliest con- 
crete problem for the cabinet of Lincoln. 
Buchanan had allowed the southern arsenals 
and forts to be seized by the states in which 
they lay, and had permitted officers in the 
army and civil service to deliver the prop- 
erty of the United States, which they were 
under oath to guard, to agents of the Con- 
federacy. He had done this rather than 
raise new issues by a forcible retention, and 
if compromise measures had brought back 
the South there could have been little criti- 
cism of it. Uncertain as to the willingness of 
the United States to back him up, he had 
played for time. On the inauguration of 
Lincoln opinion was still unformed, though 
the clear analysis in his inaugural brought 
some change during the ensuing weeks. 
The first vote of his cabinet, March 15, 
favored the continuation of Buchanan's 
policy. Until nearly the end of March, the 
commanding general of the army, Winfield 
Scott, believed the southern forts could not 
be retained. 

The forts in Charleston harbor were by 
common consent accepted as the test case, 
and had figured largely in secession news 
since Christmas, 1860. Three of them there 
were, in charge of a trifling garrison of 
federal troops, commanded by a southern 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 51 

officer, Major Robert Anderson. Their de- 
livery had been demanded by South Caro- 
lina, immediately upon the passage of the 
ordinance of secession, but while overtures 
for their surrender were making at Wash- 
ington, Anderson abandoned the untenable 
Fort Moultrie and moved his troops to the 
island on which Fort Sumter lay. Here, on 
his own responsibility, he raised his flag, 
and by giving notoriety to his position in- 
creased the difficulty for the administration 
which should abandon him. 

Fort Sumter remained the centre of discus- 
sion. The waverings of Buchanan's cabinet 
respecting it ended in part when Buchanan 
determined, on December 31, not to deal 
with commissioners from the seceding states, 
and agreed a few days later to try to 
re-enforce the fort. A coasting steamer, the 
"Star of the West," was sent from New 
York with supplies, since the garrison was 
scantily provided. But the troops of South 
Carolina fired upon the steamer as she en- 
tered the harbor, and her captain brought 
her back to New York. The re-enforcement, 
thus defeated by armed resistance, brought 
about a cabinet crisis and a group of new 
appointments, after which Confederate en- 
croachments were fewer until the end of 
the administration. 

Major Anderson was still hanging on to 
Fort Sumter, in a state of siege, when Lin- 
coln became President, and his support or 



52 THE CIVIL WAR 

withdrawal was the first issue. With a cabi- 
net voting against re-enforcement, it took the 
President a month to reach his determination. 
Early in April he decided that rations must 
be sent in spite of the menacing presence of 
a South Carolina army and the demands of 
the Confederate commissioners. Before he 
could induce co-operation among the members 
of his cabinet the determination leaked out, 
a formal demand for surrender, made by 
order of the Confederate government, was 
delivered to Major Anderson, and, early on 
the morning of April 12, the Charleston 
batteries opened fire. For a day and a half 
Anderson held out, though in a ramshackle 
fortress with few rations and little ammuni- 
tion. About noon on the 13th, with barracks 
burning and the garrison in imminent dan- 
ger of destruction, he accepted overtures 
which typified the disorderly enthusiasm 
of the southern cause. A former senator 
from Texas, Wigfall by name, was in 
Charleston as an unofficial aide to General 
Beauregard. Without authority, but with 
the zeal of a volunteer. Colonel Wigfall buc- 
kled a sword about his frock coat, forced 
a negro to row him in a small boat to the 
fort, clambered through an embrasure with 
a white handkerchief tied to his sword, and 
had agreed upon terms of surrender before 
the arrival of a formal detail of officers to 
demand it. On April 14, according to the 
agreement, Anderson ran up his flag and 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 53 

saluted it, and then embarked unmolested 
to return to the United States, his only loss 
of life being one private killed during the 
salute. 

With the fall of Fort Sumter occurred the 
first clash that public opinion chose to notice, 
marking a victory in tactics for Lincoln. 
Both he and Davis had hoped that if con- 
flict must come it might occur in such a way 
as to hurt the other cause and consolidate 
their own. Davis, with only seven states in 
his Confederacy and the upper South yet 
undecided, needed such a crisis as would 
show to those reluctant slave states the federal 
government in the role of an oppressor, 
trampling upon the doctrine of state rights. 
Lincoln, contrariwise, strove to avoid an 
appearance of coercion, and to make it 
clear to his uncertain North that enforce- 
ment of the law, rather than war against a 
group of states, was his determination. The 
zeal of South Carolina here lost the Con- 
federacy a point. Her bombardment pre- 
ceded the arrival of re-enforcements at the 
fort, instead of following that event, and was 
accepted in the North as a gratuitous attack. 
At once there appeared a new certainty of 
purpose. None could deny that the South 
meant war, that it had made the first attack, 
and that disunion was at hand. 



CHAPTER IV 

CIVIL WAR 

No officer in the service of the United 
States or the Confederate States, in April, 
1861, had seen, in one time or place, more 
than three-fourths of the little regular army. 
This had remained for years near 16,000, 
and aggregated in June, 1860, 16,006 officers 
and men. Yet on April 15, 1861, President 
Lincoln called upon the states for 75,000 
volunteers to enforce the laws and repossess 
the property of the United States. There 
was no general officer with experience ade- 
quate to command such a force, no machinery 
in the war department, under its incapable 
secretary, to feed, clothe, arm, move, or 
pay it, and no plan in the mind of any re- 
sponsible official for its immediate use. The 
laws which had been violated were to be 
enforced by the President, using those powers 
which the Constitution gives to him in case 
of armed insurrection; but Lincoln's greatest 
chance of speedy success in the restoration of 
order lay in the disorganization of the op- 
posing army which, though already several 
weeks old, was nearly as chaotic as his own. 

54 



CIVIL WAR 55 

The United States was not a military 
nation, though it possessed in abundance the 
materials which go to make one. With a 
vigorous and growing population, with great 
potential wealth and light taxation, it needed 
only a motive and training to evolve not 
one great war machine, but two. Until 1863 
fighting was highly experimental, neither 
government possessing a reliable force in 
either officers or men. After that year, fight- 
ing was professional on both sides, affording 
to military experts processes for emulation 
rather than examples to be avoided. Yet 
prior to Lincoln's call for volunteers a 
prophecy as to the outcome of the struggle 
might have been undertaken. 

The states of the Union, iti 1860, extended 
to the western border of Texas, with one 
complete tier of states beyond the Mississippi, 
and two outlying states upon the Pacific 
Coast. It contained an aggregate of about 
31,000,000 inhabitants, whose proportions 
in the hostile camps depended upon the 
intensity of grievance and the plausibility 
of statesmen. If the Confederacy had carried 
with it not only the seven states of the lower 
South, and the four of the upper South 
which followed speedily upon the call for 
troops, but all the fifteen slave-holding states, 
the disproportion of population would have 
been much less. But as the lines were finally 
drawn, twenty- two of the states of 1860, 
and part of a twenty-third, remained with 



56 THE CIVIL WAR 

the Union and massed a population of 
22,700,000 against the 8,700,000 who occu- 
pied the eleven states of the Confederacy. 
More uneven were the figures of white in- 
habitants, since in the Union there remained 
nearly 22,000,000 of these, while the Con- 
federacy had but 5,096,000. With more than 
four white citizens north of the Potomac to 
every white person in the South, the contest 
was unequal at the outset. That it could 
have been undertaken cheerfully and with 
belief in ultimate success by the Confederate 
leaders excites amazement. 

In geographic relations the South was and 
appeared to be somewhat better placed to 
resist invasion than the North was to exe- 
cute it. A compact, well- watered territory 
with abundance of seaports and penetrating 
rivers, the South could protect its military 
frontier with a minimum of exertion. Wait- 
ing for the attack, and repelling it on the 
border, it could manage on a smaller war 
budget and a slighter commissariat to defend 
itself. The North had longer distances to 
traverse to reach the fighting line, and was 
always operating from outside the defences, 
whereas the South moved in the short line 
from the centre to the circumference. 

This geographic advantage took a leading 
place in the southern mind among the causes 
contributing to success. It was of value 
throughout the war, though its utility had 
been lessened by industrial facts with which 



58 THE CIVIL WAR 

the South was not intimately familiar. The 
old North had possessed inadequate routes 
of communication, and the Northwest, whose 
sympathy the South hoped for, had been a 
section by itself, more dependent on the South 
then on the East. But in the ten years 
before secession the railroads had appeared. 
The South thought of its internal water 
routes and the aid they could derive from 
local railways. All the seaboard states were 
connected by rail, and from them trunk 
lines crossed the hills of Virginia and those of 
Georgia, converging upon Chattanooga and 
continuing west to the Mississippi River at 
Memphis. North and south the Mississippi 
was paralleled, by the Mobile and Ohio, and 
its branches. Kentucky and Virginia had 
local roads and, should Maryland secede, the 
Baltimore and Ohio would bring an added 
trunk line within the Confederate territory. 

But these southern roads, important as 
they were, had changed the facts of geog- 
raphy less than those of the North. Be- 
sides the Baltimore and Ohio, which was 
retained in Union hands, the North had 
trunk lines in the Pennsylvania, Erie, New 
York Central, and Grand Trunk systems. 
The Ohio River was touched by northwestern 
railways at Pittsburg, Steuben ville. Wheeling, 
Marietta, Portsmouth, Cincinnati, Lawrence- 
burg, Jeffersonville, New Albany, Evans- 
ville, and Cairo. Without these lines the 
North could hardly have hoped to crush the 



CIVIL WAR 59 

Confederacy: with them the disadvantage 
of distance was compensated for by the 
speed of movement. 

The South had some advantage in geog- 
raphy. In industry, its chance depended 
upon keeping its seaports open and getting 
its cotton to the European market. Could 
this be done, the proceeds of the cotton would 
keep the government in munitions and food, 
but should the ports be closed the South had 
few manufactures and could not be self- 
sustaining. The North was a manufacturing 
community. Not yet self-sufficient, it had 
the beginnings of most of its industries, and 
need not suffer even if all its foreign com- 
merce were destroyed. Yankee ingenuity 
had begun to provide labor-saving inven- 
tions. The introduction of the reaper into 
the northwest wheat fields was a national 
gain. Said the secretary of war, in 1861: 
"The reaper is to the North what slavery 
is to the South. By taking the places of 
regiments of young men in the Western 
harvest fields, it releases them to do battle 
for the Union at the front, and at the same 
time keeps up the supply of bread for the 
nation and the nation's armies." Yet the 
reaper was only one out of many inventions 
which made the northerner more effective, 
man for man, than his southern fellow citizen. 

Based on its manufactures, the North 
had wealth, taxable values and credit in 
excess of those of the South, and far greater 



60 THE CIVIL WAR 

than even well-informed southerners believed. 
From the financial panic of 1857 the South 
had escaped, since she possessed few of the 
institutions that could be affected most by 
industrial depression, — banks, railways, fac- 
tories, and cities. In every aspect of her 
life, the lack of ready capital showed itself. 
The North, however, with a more complex 
economic organization, had suffered griev- 
ously, and had presented what the South 
read as a lesson upon the evils of industrial 
society. Sensible southerners believed that 
the sufferings of the North and the immunity 
of the South proved that a society organized 
on the plantation and slavery was safer 
and wealthier than one based upon manu- 
factures and industry. Upon this belief many 
founded their hopes for a successful outcome. 

Convinced that its country was admirably 
situated for defence, that its social order 
was not subject to financial disturbance, that 
in the cotton crop it had an unquenchable 
source of revenue, and, finally, that one 
healthy southerner could lick ^ve Yankees, 
the Confederacy faced the overwhelming 
numbers of the North without fear. 

The firing upon Fort Sumter and the call 
for troops on April 15, 1861, gave a text 
throughout the North, and made it forget 
that it had ever been undecided. The 
Union was attacked, and volunteers crowded 
around their local leaders to demand en- 
listment. The wires to Washington were 



CIVIL WAR 61 

crowded with tenders of regiments and 
companies, and sturdy Governor Andrew of 
Massachusetts, who had drilled his militia 
all the spring, had only to call them to their 
armories and start them south. Not only 
Americans, educated to a confidence in the 
Union and additionally excited by a hatred 
of slavery, but newcomers of the last two 
decades, shouldered the musket and learned 
the manual. Out of the eastern cities came 
the Irish, driven from their old home by 
starvation and induced to enter the American 
mihtia by the deep hope of a future war for 
Ireland, and now paying for their military 
tuition. Out of the western cities, Cincin- 
nati, Chicago, and St. Louis, came the 
Germans, immigrants of '48 and later, many 
of them trained as soldiers in the Father- 
land, and all inspired by an abiding spirit 
of hberty and nationality. Home-born or 
foreign, the enlistment went beyond the 
call, and Lincoln accepted 90,000 without 
satisfying the enthusiastic response to his 
proclamation. 

The management of this army, whose 
numbers continued to grow until it finally 
included more than 1,000,000 men, fell upon 
a war department accustomed only to a 
handful of troops and the routine of peace. 
The regular army, necessarily called upon 
for officers, was disorganized by numerous 
resignations of men from the South who 
elected to go with their states. The most 



62 THE CIVIL WAR 

promising of its officers, to whom even was 
tendered the general command, was Robert 
E. Lee, of a famous Virginia family, whose 
loyalty to his state, in a cause which he dis- 
trusted, deprived the Union of his services. 
After Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, com- 
mander of the Utah expedition of 1857, was 
the greatest loss. But in both armies, men 
trained at West Point dominated through- 
out the war, although they formed only a 
small fraction of all the officers employed. 
The professional soldier showed his vast 
superiority to the volunteer in the per- 
formance of his trade. Volunteer officers 
rose to high rank, but few of them stand 
among the generals of proved reputation in 
1865. Men who had resigned from the army 
before the war, frequently to use their tal- 
ents in railway enterprises, asked for reap- 
pointment and were freely given commands 
in the great organization camps, where they 
applied their experience to the training of 
raw recruits. 

As the regiments poured into Washington, 
the national capital speedily became the 
greatest of the camps. Partly from senti- 
mental reasons it was the centre of opera- 
tions. But sentiment was re-enforced by 
military necessity, since just across the 
Potomac were the Confederate outposts, 
and even north of that river conditions were 
insecure. Baltimore was rebellious, and the 
secession of Maryland was not impossible. 



CIVIL WAR 63 

The safety of Washington was the first mili- 
tary problem of the war, and remained 
among the most difficult until the end. 

Upon a loyal Virginian, a testy old veteran 
of two wars, Major-General Winfield Scott, 
the preliminary organization of the Union 
army developed. On the date of the call for 
troops there had been seven states in the 
Confederacy. Four more — North Carolina, 
Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas — seceded 
soon after the call, voicing their indigna- 
tion at the proposal to use their militia to 
coerce their fellow states. The strategic 
problem from April to July, after the de- 
fence of Washington, was the control of the 
border states, of which Maryland, Kentucky, 
and Missouri were most important. The 
future of these was in doubt, and it will 
always be uncertain whether their ultimate 
loyalty was due the more to their convictions 
or to their nearness to the North which made 
coercion easy. To these the President, act- 
ing upon the maxim of one of his successors, 
"spoke softly and carried a big stick." 
Appealing in every way to their Union 
citizens, he mobilized troops at strategic 
points — Washington, Cincinnati, and St. 
Louis — where secession tendencies could most 
easily be checked. The arsenal at Harper's 
Ferry had been lost at the outset, but Mary- 
land was held under a control that improved 
as time went on. 

At the extreme west of the line of the 



M THE CIVIL WAR 

border states, Missouri was the seat of a 
civil war of her own, with rival state govern- 
ments struggling for control, and both fac- 
tions recognizing the strategic value of St. 
Louis and the mouth of the Ohio. Between 
Missouri and Virginia, Kentucky tried to 
avoid decision by proclaiming a neutrality 
that assumed a degree of state sovereignty 
quite as high as that which the seceding 
states maintained. But, hopeful of her ulti- 
mate adherence, the Union armies tried to 
respect the neutrality, until invasion of 
Kentucky by a Confederate force compelled 
a counter attack. 

All along the line regiments were collect- 
ing until, in December, there were upwards 
of 600,000 men in camp. Reputations were 
rising and falling in the process of weed- 
ing out officers and proving ability. In St. 
Louis, in the summer, Fremont was at the 
height of his power, in command of the West 
and joining politics to war. At Cincinnati, 
in the late spring, a young regular, G. B. 
McClellan, was forcing the Ohio volunteers 
into shape. In front of Washington, Mc- 
Dowell took charge of the new regiments as 
they arrived for the same purpose. 

On July 4, 1861, the confusion at Wash- 
ington was increased by the meeting of Con- 
gress in special session to provide ways and 
means for the maintenance of the armies. 
Thus far Lincoln had acted upon his own 
responsibility and the slender powers given 



CIVIL WAR 65 

by the old militia act of 1795. The volun- 
teer army had already begun to receive 
criticism because the advance on Richmond 
had not yet begun and Congress added to 
the political pressure for fighting regardless 
of preparation. Even the President thought 
the army no worse off than that of the enemy, 
and that the impatient people must be given 
a sign that the government was at work in 
their behalf. 

Facing Washington, and in the road of an 
advance against the Confederate capital, at 
Richmond, lay a considerable army that 
had been accumulating while the troops 
were forming in the North. The Confed- 
erate government, which had raised it, had 
escaped some of the embarrassments that 
worried Lincoln. Jefferson Davis was him- 
self a West Pointer, with long experience in 
both the army and the war department. He 
had no existing army from which the old 
and incompetent senior officers must be 
eliminated. He was sustained unanimously 
by his people, once secession was a fact. 
From the former United States officers who 
applied he could select commanders as he 
needed them, with a discrimination founded 
upon personal knowledge of nearly every 
officer who had left West Point for thirty 
years. Lincoln was forced to rely upon 
hearsay as to reputations. Davis knew them 
all at first hand. And in addition to his 
superior skill and knowledge, Davis was 



66 THE CIVIL WAR 

under less political pressure than his oppo- 
nent and was forced to reward fewer local 
politicians with commissions in the army. 
Moving the capital to Richmond early in 
June, Davis was defended by two armies, 
one under Joseph E. Johnston, in the Shenan- 
doah Valley, above Harper's Ferry, and the 
other under Beauregard, the hero of Fort 
Sumter, who lay along the Potomac threat- 
ening Washington. 

Against these raw Confederate forces, 
McDowell was compelled to move his equally 
raw Union army, while members of Congress, 
on July 21, drove out along the road to 
Manassas Junction to see the fight. Politi- 
cians had not yet given up the notion that 
it was to be a three months' war, and still 
expected that the first battle would break 
down the Confederacy. They and the peo- 
pie of the North hoped that this would be 
the battle. Along the banks of a small 
tributary of the Potomac, Bull Run, about 
twenty-five miles from Washington, the armies 
met on a scorching day. About equal in 
strength, both showed their inexperience, 
but the Union regiments gave way first, and 
the return to Washington was a disgraceful 
rout. 

Three months after the call for troops the 
Confederacy, instead of being suppressed, 
was stronger than ever. The control of 
Missouri was not yet certain, and there had 
been no considerable Union victories any- 



CIVIL WAR 67 

where. The disaster at Bull Run deepened 
the gloom of the North and suggested the 
thought that the war was more serious than 
had been anticipated. The country looked 
about helplessly for any man who gave 
promise of ability and steadiness, and who 
might ultimately redeem the cause. 

At only one point along the mihtary line 
of the border states had success rewarded 
the Union efforts. This was in the western 
counties of Virginia, where population and 
industry had created a condition unfavorable 
to the secession cause. Years before 1860 it 
had been prophesied that should Virginia 
ever carry out her threat to leave the Union 
a portion of her citizens would turn the doc- 
trine of secession against her and rend the 
state. Tidewater Virginia had been an old 
centre of the plantation South, but had been 
engaged in a perennial struggle for control 
with the upland and mountain counties 
which contained few slaves and had slight 
sympathy with the southern social order. 
Extending from the Chesapeake to the Ohio, 
the Old Dominion contained two clearly 
defined areas and groups of population, of 
which the mountain region was always in- 
surgent and ever for the Union. Within a 
month after Virginia joined the Confederacy, 
her western citizens organized for the crea- 
tion of a new, Union, state which should com- 
prise her western end. 

This division of sentiment in Virginia, 



68 THE CIVIL WAR 

which was paralleled, though to a lesser de- 
gree, in the mountain regions of Kentucky, 
Tennessee, and North Carolina, attracted 
the attention of Lincoln early in the con- 
troversy. One of his earliest schemes for 
a campaign included an army for the relief 
of the southern Unionists. To McClellan, 
in command at Cincinnati, the call for aid 
from western Virginia came in April and 
May, and toward the end of June he 
crossed the Ohio with some twenty-seven 
regiments and rallied the unionists at Graf- 
ton. After a few trifling engagements in 
July, in which he drove away the enemy, he 
remained in possession of the mountain 
valleys, the only Union leader with a record 
of success when, on the morning after Bull 
Run, his country seemed most to need a 
general. That very day, July 22, Lincoln 
summoned him to Washington to supersede 
McDowell. 

George Brinton McClellan was one of 
four major-generals ranking next to General 
Scott and commissioned by the President in 
May, 1861. Not quite thirty-five years of 
age he possessed a training and record that 
would have made him prominent without 
his little successes in Virginia. Born in 
Philadelphia, the son of a physician of 
standing, he had been admitted to the 
military academy at West Point a few 
months under legal age, but had justified 
his admission by graduating second in his 



CIVIL WAR 69 

class in 1846, and making the engineers' 
corps, which was even then the reward of 
the brilHant. Fresh from the academy, he 
went into the Mexican War, from which he 
emerged with credit, experience, and the 
brevet rank of captain. In 1848 he was de- 
tailed as instructor in engineering at West 
Point, and here he continued his own pro- 
fessional studies in the art of war. Napo- 
leon, his hero, was equally the model of 
his colleagues. After three years in the 
classroom he was sent out into the field to 
do his share in the survey for the continental 
railroads. First in Texas, then in the North- 
west, he was engaged in the reconnoissance. 
By 1855 the young captain was a marked 
man, being sent to the field of the Crimean 
War to observe the European armies at close 
range, and making there a detailed study of 
comparative organization, equipment, and 
tactics. On his return to America with an 
ideal preparation for a soldier, McClellan 
yielded to the industrial tendencies of the 
prosperous fifties, and resigned his commis- 
sion to become, first, the chief engineer, and 
then the vice-president of the newly opened 
Illinois Central railway. In 1860 he accepted 
the presidency of the Ohio and Mississippi 
Railroad Company, with headquarters at 
Cincinnati, where he settled down with a 
charming bride to the work of a civilian. 

Upon the call for troops McClellan went 
back into the harness and worked so sue- 



70 THE CIVIL WAR 

cessfuUy that after Bull Run he was seized 
upon as the destined hero. Nominally under 
General Scott, he was actually in control of 
all the armies around Washington, and his 
real power was scarcely altered when on No- 
vember 1, 1861, his aged chief retired to 
private life. Before taking up his command, 
McClellan had shown both the strength and 
the weakness that have made his place in 
history more difficult to iax, and more bitterly 
controverted than that of any other officer 
of the war. As far back as 1853, when en- 
gaged under General Isaac I. Stevens on the 
Northern Pacific survey, he had vexed his 
commander by over-caution and a disposi- 
tion to magnify the obstacles in his road. 
But he had shown a capacity for organi- 
zation and preparation, which had been 
deepened by technical studies of European 
armies in those processes in which he most 
excelled. Had he been taught by adversity 
and chastened by waiting and experience, 
he might have risen to permanent command, 
for no Union officer was better endowed or 
trained. His phenomenal rise, however, 
turned his head, and he never fully justified 
the confidence which Lincoln placed in him. 
Before the battle of Bull Run, McClellan 
had, in his private heart, begun to patronize 
General Scott. "I value that old man's 
praise very highly," he said to his wife in 
a letter of July 19, "and wrote him a 
short note last night telling him so." In 



CIVIL WAR 71 

three months more he spoke of a visit from 
the President of the United States as an 
interruption. 

Through all the summer and fall MeClellan 
organized his Army of the Potomac. He 
withdrew from the streets of Washington the 
military loafers, officers and men, who had 
infested them, set to work upon the forti- 
fications, trained and equipped his troops 
and made an army. No general of the Civil 
War attained a greater success than he in 
winning a love and popularity that were not 
incompatible with the highest discipline of 
his men, or in welding the component parts 
into a military unit. By November, when 
he succeeded General Scott in first command, 
his machine was regarded as ready for use, 
but he was still at work upon his deliber- 
ate plan "to display such an overwhelming 
strength as will convince all our antagonists, 
especially those of the governing, aristocratic 
class, of the utter impossibility of resistance." 

The public and the government, more 
patient since the revelations of Bull Run, 
now began again to demand that he move 
against the enemy. Before New Year it 
appeared likely that there might be two 
enemies, since it was learned that England 
was hurrying troops to Canada, had taken 
steps to increase her fleet upon the North 
Atlantic station, and was threatening instant 
war. 



CHAPTER V 

AFLOAT AND ABROAD 

Before the first troops reached Washing- 
ton in response to the call for volunteers, 
Lincoln took the second step in suppressing 
the Confederacy and at once involved the 
United States in the erection of a navy and 
in a legal argument upon the nature of the 
war. On April 19, 1861, he issued a proclama- 
tion declaring a blockade of the ports of the 
seven states of the lower South, being all 
those which had as yet joined the Confeder- 
acy, and announcing that interference under 
pretext of Confederate authority with any 
vessel of the United States would be regarded 
as piracy and treated as such. The task of 
making the blockade effective became the 
work of the new secretary of the navy, 
Gideon S. Welles of Connecticut. 

When this blockade was announced as a 
means of bringing the South to terms, the 
navy of the United States included some 
ninety vessels, whereas the seacoast to be 
controlled contained nearly two hundred 
harbors and stretched 3549 miles from Alex- 
andria, Virginia, to the mouth of the Rio 

72 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 73 

Grande. Most of the warships were small 
and antiquated, and during the next four 
years the navy department both built a 
new fleet and struggled with the complexi- 
ties involved in the change from sail to 
steam and, greater still, from wood to iron. 
Welles, a journalist, provided the adminis- 
trative skill in this transition; his assistant 
secretary, Gustavus V. Fox, was an expert 
naval engineer and directed the practical 
work. 

Without ostentation, and infrequently in 
the public eye, the navy did its work. Its 
personnel received little of the sudden praise 
or indiscriminate blame that unsettled the 
souls of officers on land. Yet "Uncle Sam's 
web feet" were ever active, and the President 
gave them ample credit: — "Wherever the 
ground was a little damp," he said, "they 
have been and made their tracks." The 
navy was largely free from the difficulties 
brought into the army by political ambition. 
Every village politician believed himself 
competent to be a colonel if not a brigadier- 
general, while the public, unaccustomed to 
dwell upon special fitness, assumed that 
military capacity was inherent in all. But 
few fancied themselves able to command a 
ship without experience, and the navy was 
left, generally, to the control of experts. 

It called for a large fleet and tiresome 
months of unromantic service on station to 
fill the President's order of blockade; but 



74 THE CIVIL WAR 

it required an even greater degree of ingenuity 
to explain the legal theory upon which the 
order was based, and to persuade the nations 
of the world that it was justifiable. "No 
State upon its own mere motion," declared 
Lincoln in the inaugural, "can lawfully get 
out of the Union." Upon this theory of the 
perpetuity of the Union he based his acts. 
The so-called Confederacy was in his eye 
only a conspiracy of men masquerading as 
states and pretending to be a nation; it was 
only an insurrection against the laws of the 
United States to be suppressed by an en- 
larged police. The confusion in the United 
States resulting from it was merely a domestic 
ruction, to which other nations, like friendly 
and discreet neighbors, were expected to be 
blind and deaf. This theory of the municipal 
character of the insurrection was satisfactory 
according to constitutional law, and was en- 
titled to respect in international law so long 
as the United States acted upon it. 

The municipal theory of the Civil War 
had great advantages for the administration 
called upon to fight it. The President can 
suppress insurrection as the result of his 
constitutional powers. He cannot, however, 
make war without a preceding declaration by 
Congress or an actual invasion by a foreign 
power. To admit that South Carolina had 
invaded the United States, admitted that 
she had got out of the Union, which was the 
fact that she desired to establish. Main- 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 75 

taining the logical impossibility of leaving 
the Union, the President was forced to take 
his ground that the states were yet inside 
and component members of it. No theory 
that could have satisfied the domestic needs 
of the situation could quite cover all the 
facts of the obvious temporary independence 
of the southern states. 

But in issuing the proclamation of blockade 
the President forgot his own asseveration 
that there was no war, and declared his 
intent to use powers which no domestic 
revolt, however serious, could justify. He 
proposed to establish an effective blockade, 
to seize vessels of any nation attempting to 
elude it, and to subject them to the processes 
of prize courts. As long as the disturbance 
was within the land, and its pacification did 
not involve the rights of neutral nations, the 
theory was adequate, but as soon as the first 
British blockade runner was arrested and 
taken into port it was certain that Secretary 
Seward would have to explain how this vio- 
lation of a friendly nation could take place 
in time of peace. 

The inconsistency of the mere-insurgency 
theory with a proclamation of blockade ap- 
pears never to have been fully realized by 
Lincoln, though the Supreme Court recog- 
nized it in the first case appearing before it. 
The resistance and the powers needed to 
suppress it went beyond the incidents of 
mob violence, and became a war, and Lincoln 



76 THE CIVIL WAR 

"was bound to meet it in the shape it pre- 
sented itself, without waiting for Congress 
to baptize it with a name; and no name given 
to it by him or them could change the fact." 
Thus ran the decision in the Prize Cases, 
which went on to point out that only a war, 
implying two sides and throwing other nations 
into the place of neutrals, can justify the 
rights of blockade and those of search. This 
was the strong contention of the United 
States during the Napoleonic wars, when 
both England and France were disposed 
to forget it, and it is a curious reversal of 
positions to see Great Britain, in 1861, 
solicitous over the rights of neutral states. 
Blind to the inconsistency, Lincoln deter- 
mined to use the rights of war, yet to deny 
to Great Britain the privileges of neutrals. 

The organization of the foreign service of 
the United States fell to Seward, and attracted 
small attention from the President. As 
usual the ministers commissioned by Bu- 
chanan were recalled, one by one, and re- 
placed by members of the ruling party. The 
British post was regarded as the chief ap- 
pointment, as it always has been, and in the 
Civil War gained an added importance be- 
cause the interest of Great Britain was 
affected more than that of all the world 
outside. 

The Confederate States counted on the 
cotton crop as their means of carrying on the 
war. The sale of this abroad was to produce 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 77 

the revenue needed by the army, while the 
interest of the European countries in the 
crop was beheved to be sufficient to induce 
them to quarrel with the United States should 
a blockade attempt to interfere with it. 
More than five million bales of cotton were 
marketed by the South in 1860, nearly half 
of it going to the spindles of the British 
factories. Yearly the demand for it was 
strengthening. The invention of the sewing 
machine, revolutionizing the clothing indus- 
try, had multiplied the demand for cotton 
cloth, to the great profit and encouragement 
of the South. In England great cities lived 
upon the manufacture of this cloth. Should 
their supply be cut off starvation would con- 
front them and, if the southern diagnosis 
was correct. Great Britain would be forced 
to go to war on behalf of the Confederacy. 

Early in 1861 Confederate agents were de- 
spatched to sound the courts of Europe and 
to lay in stores for the new government. 
Information respecting their status was sent 
to the American minister in London even 
before the inauguration. Dallas was in- 
structed to represent to the British ministry 
that these agents of an insurgent govern- 
ment had no standing in law, and that the 
whole trouble was domestic. All the foreign 
ministers were instructed by Seward that, 
if the resistance should call for force, it would 
be out of order for governments to issue proc- 
lamations of neutrality, since there would be 



78 THE CIVIL WAR 

no war. All were to prevent a recognition of 
independence at any cost. 

Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, 
son of one President and grandson of another, 
was appointed minister to Great Britain in 
April and left Boston on May 1. The British 
government to which he was commissioned 
was in the hands of the Liberals, — but Lib- 
erals so old in office that they had lived 
down the enthusiasms of youth and were 
unlikely to be influenced in their conduct 
by any motive but the advantage of their 
country. Lord Palmerston, their prime min- 
ister, was an old man who had distrusted 
American politicians during a long and active 
life. Lord John Russell, his foreign secretary, 
was less unfriendly to Americans, but both 
he and Palmerston partook somewhat of 
the temper of the British ruling class that 
knew the southerner more intimately and 
liked him better than the northern business 
or professional man. There was a predis- 
position in England to sympathize with the 
South, regardless of slavery, which Great 
Britain had outlawed. Davis and his col- 
leagues were "gentlemen" but none had 
heard of Lincoln as possessing social standing 
or aspirations. Until it was entirely clear 
that slavery was the motive force of the 
Confederacy, this sympathy remained. It 
had been understood at Washington, from 
the despatches of Mr. Dallas, that the status 
to be accorded to the Confederacy by the 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 79 

British government would not be determined 
until after the arrival of Mr. Adams, who 
reached London on May 13, 1861. 

The fall of Fort Sumter and the issuance of 
the proclamation of blockade on April 19, 
had changed the necessities of the situation 
for Lord Palmerston's government. Except 
in a war, no blockade could be legal; and 
if this was to be a war, the close commer- 
cial ties of Great Britain to southern ports 
compelled the observance of a strict neu- 
trality. On the very day of Adams's arrival 
in London, and greatly to his discomfiture, 
Lord Russell announced that her Majesty 
had seen fit to issue a proclamation of 
neutrality, which could not avoid according 
belligerent rights to the Confederacy during 
the ensuing war. American public opinion, 
as blind as the cabinet to the legal incon- 
sistency of blockades in an insurrection, 
took the act as evidence of unfriendliness, 
if not of bad faith, and the tension upon 
Anglo-American relations, so conspicuous 
throughout the war, began. Later reflection 
reverses the contemporary opinion; neutral- 
ity was eminently proper and, had the proc- 
lamation been put off until after the battle 
of Bull Run, it might reasonably have been 
a proclamation of recognition. 

In the middle of May, Mr. Adams took 
up his long diplomatic duel with Lord John 
Russell. Both of mature age, deliberate and 
unemotional, clear of vision and honest in 



80 THE CIVIL WAR 

intention, their mutual respect steadily in- 
creased, and no difficulty ever became worse 
through slipshod manners on the part of 
either. Neutrality had been proclaimed and 
belligerent rights conceded in what Adams 
regarded as unfriendly haste, but there yet 
remained recognition to be prevented; while 
that neutrality which Great Britain had 
so readily assumed needed to be watched 
lest in practice her subjects should depart 
from it. 

No less than the British government, 
Adams had to watch the secretary of state, 
for the sagacious mind of Mr. Seward more 
than once fell into vagaries whence only the 
wisdom of his chief or his subordinate rescued 
him. Seward believed that he was to be 
head of the cabinet and was to dictate the 
policies of government. On the 1st of April, 
while affairs were still unsettled, he had 
presented a memorandum to Lincoln which 
took the ground that since the President 
had no policy the secretary was willing to 
provide one, and that as a counter-irritant 
to secession it would be wise to provoke a 
foreign war with England, France, or both, 
in order to evoke a strong national spirit 
which might bring back the South. Lincoln 
forgave and concealed the impertinence, 
where most men would have dismissed the 
offender, and used Seward as his strongest 
adviser until his death. He did not however 
prevent the occasional drafting of a note too 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 81 

strong to be wise, and had not Adams used 
his own discretion when instructions were 
too belhcose, these would have led to an 
unnecessary collision. During the summer 
of 1861, with only disheartening news coming 
from the army, Adams devoted himself to 
the task of explaining the United States to 
England. 

The unofficial agents of the Confederacy 
learned that they were being watched. In 
the spring they had been received informally 
at the foreign office, but under the per- 
suasion of Adams, and convinced that the 
Union had a policy at last. Lord Russell 
ffiially closed his doors to them. In Septem- 
ber the Confederate tactics changed, and the 
commissioners were superseded by a special 
mission. It was decided to send ministers to 
both Great Britain and France, in the hope 
that formal agents, fully accredited, would 
receive an audience. 

The success at Bull Run, followed by 
other skirmishes along the line of the border 
states, determined President Davis to try 
the effect of simultaneous embassies to the 
courts of St. James and the Tuileries. The 
men selected to represent the Confeder- 
acy had weight, accomplishments, and local 
standing. John Slidell, commissioner to 
France, had had diplomatic experience before 
the war. James M. Mason, commissioned 
to England, ranked high among Virginia 
politicians. Accompanied by their families, 



82 THE CIVIL WAR 

secretaries, servants, and hampers of pro- 
visions, for the Atlantic voyage was no 
vacation trip in 1861, they ran through the 
blockade at Charleston in October, and 
arrived safely in Havana, where on Novem- 
ber 7 they took passage for Southampton. 
On November 8 the boat which carried them, 
the British mail packet "Trent, " was arrested 
in the Bahama Channel by the United States 
gunboat, "San Jacinto," Captain Wilkes. 

Disregarding the indignant protests of 
the captain of the "Trent," who had stopped 
his boat only after a shot had been fired 
across her bows, Wilkes took a strong board- 
ing force upon the British steamer and re- 
moved the ministers and their secretaries. 
With these he returned to American waters, 
allowing the "Trent" to proceed to her 
destination. The prisoners were confined 
at Boston while America went wild over the 
arrest. 

Only in the light of the repeated discour- 
agements of the first campaign, and the delay 
of McClellan with the army of the Potomac, 
can the enthusiasm which greeted the exploit 
of Captain Wilkes be understood. Americans, 
long hungry for something that looked like 
victory, lost their heads. Dinners and pres- 
entation swords were showered upon the 
captain, the House of Representatives form- 
ally thanked him, and the secretary of the 
navy wrote him a note of congratulation. 
All through November the excitement lasted. 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 83 

undimmed by the thought that Great Britain 
might resent the act. A few of the Union 
leaders — Sumner, Blair, Linculn — doubted 
the wisdom of the seizure from the first. 
Seward, pleased at the start, had a speedy 
second thought. 

In England, the government was appre- 
hensive of a seizure from the time it learned 
that commissioners were to be despatched. 
First came the rumor that they had escaped 
in a Confederate warship, in which case a 
seizure would have involved no one. But 
if, as it was later believed, the commissioners 
were to be taken from a British mail boat, 
perhaps even in the British Channel, by 
one of the American vessels there on station, 
Palmerston feared the consequences of an 
aroused public opinion, and gained no com- 
fort from the law officers of the crown. On 
November 11 he met a group of his legal ad- 
visers to consider the course of Great Brit- 
ain if the packet should be stopped and the 
passengers removed, and these advised him 
that an American cruiser would be justified, 
by British precedent, not only in a search 
upon the West India packet, but in a removal 
of the southern men and their despatches. 
Four days later he sought reassurance from 
Adams, who disavowed any intention to re- 
move the agents from the "Trent." 

Ten days after he had calmed the fears of 
the prime minister, Adams went down into 
the country to a house party. There, on 



84 THE CIVIL WAR 

November 27, he received a telegram con- 
veying the unwelcome news that the very- 
crisis that he had explained away had come 
to pass, and that Mason and Slidell had been 
prisoners for a week on the day of his con- 
ference with Palmerston. Dismayed at the 
news, certain that Palmerston would doubt 
his good faith, and not sure that Seward had 
not given way to his belligerent tendencies, 
Adams went up to London on the 28th, 
nearly convinced that there was nothing to 
be done. Not until December 17 did he re- 
ceive an instruction on the subject from the 
secretary of state, and then it was only a 
statement that Wilkes had acted without 
orders and that the matter was under 
consideration. 

Meanwhile, undeterred by the advice of 
its law officers that the United States had 
a right to do what it had done, the Brit- 
ish government was threatening retaliation. 
"Lord Palmerston is very agreeable," the 
historian Bancroft had written fourteen 
years before, "but he belongs to the old 
school of British statesmen, who think 
John Bull is everything, and that inter- 
national law, treaties, and interests of all 
sorts must yield to British pretensions." 
True to the description, the instruction to 
the British minister in Washington, Lord 
Lyons, was dated November 30, before any 
explanation had been, or could have been, 
received. Release and apology were de- 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 85 

manded peremptorily, and additional in- 
structions ordered the minister to return to 
London with legation and archives, if these 
should not be granted in a week. 

Long before Lord Lyons presented the 
ultimatum from his chief, the cabinet in 
Washington realized that wholesale jubila- 
tion did not cover all the facts. Besides the 
great embarrassment of a British war at 
this time, a war which could scarcely avoid 
accomplishing the aims of the Confederacy, 
the difficulty of justifying the captures by 
Captain Wilkes loomed up. Serious advisers 
at home and abroad told Seward that the 
act was an outrage. On a friendly vessel, 
between two neutral ports, individuals who 
were in no sense military had been arrested. 
Grave doubts existed as to the legality of 
such seizure on any terms, but Captain 
Wilkes had made a bad case worse by acting 
himself as judge and jury in taking the pris- 
oners and releasing the carrier. Had the 
arrest been proper, the "Trent" ought to 
have been seized and sent to port for trial 
and condemnation or release. By Christ- 
mas, Seward saw that the captives must be 
given up. 

On December 25 and 26 the cabinet sat 
in a prolonged session over a note which 
Seward had written in reply to Lord Lyons's 
demand, and which marks the highest point 
reached by the secretary as a political dip- 
lomat. Laboriously he convinced his col- 



S6 THE CIVIL WAR 

leagues on the main point, then read the 
note which, while conceding the release, 
made an appeal likely to soften the humilia- 
tion to his fellow citizens. Justifying the 
right to arrest such individuals as these, he 
inquired whether the detention had been 
in good form and according to the legal 
precedents. Here he found that the British 
contention was "an old, honored, and cher- 
ished American cause." Ever since the 
administration of Jefferson it had been 
the American principle, urged repeatedly in 
the face of British practice, that whenever 
property supposedly liable to condemnation 
was found upon a neutral vessel, the offend- 
ing vessel must be carried into port. Wilkes 
had not done this. "If I decide this case in 
favor of my own Government, I must dis- 
allow its most cherished principles, and 
reverse and forever abandon its essential 
policy. The country cannot afford the sac- 
rifice. If I maintain these principles, and 
adhere to that policy, I must surrender the 
case itself. . . . We are asked to do to the 
British nation just what we have always 
insisted all nations ought to do to us." 

Shortly after the New Year, the prisoners 
were given up and taken to England, where 
they were less useful to the Confederate 
cause than when in an American prison. 
War, which had been dangerously close, was 
avoided. But the United States never for- 
gave the undue haste with which Lord Pal- 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 87 

merston sent out his ultimatum and followed 
it with troops, while Palmerston, always 
suspicious of Americans, was doubly irritated 
by the note of Seward which, while closing 
the case by a compliance, made the compli- 
ance in terms unpalatable to any Briton, 
and of doubtful applicability to the case in 
hand. The prime question in the case of 
Mason and Slidell concerns the right of a 
belligerent to capture enemy property or 
persons, not military, on a voyage between 
neutral ports. 

Though falling short of a war, the "Trent" 
affair left English opinion ready to sympa- 
thize with the successes of the Confederacy 
and to delight in the defeats of the United 
States. Adams found in the months imme- 
diately following another problem of even 
greater legal difficulty, which finally got 
beyond his control. This was the attempt 
of the Confederacy to build a navy. 

The same reasons which kept volunteer 
politicians from interfering with the manage- 
ment of the United States navy made it 
hard for the Confederacy to maintain any 
navy. Only mariners could command. The 
South had not been commercial in organiza- 
tion and possessed but a small sea-faring 
element among its population. Some of the 
naval officers of the tJnited States resigned, 
but these in their work of organizing a Con- 
federate navy were forced to rely upon the 
services of foreigners for personnel and to 



88 THE CIVIL WAR 

secure most of their material equipment 
abroad. A few United States vessels were 
seized at the time of secession, certain 
merchantmen and coasters were converted 
into cruisers, but any large naval equipment 
called for different resources than those which 
the Confederacy contained. 

The purchase and construction of ships of 
war was one of the first objects of Confed- 
erate diplomacy, and became the occasion 
of the special mission of James H. Bulloch, 
a former captain of the United States navy, 
who arrived in England in the summer of 
1861. The most important of Bulloch's 
contracts was made with a great ship-build- 
ing firm. Laird Brothers, with yards at Birk- 
enhead, while the vessel built to his order 
was launched in the spring of 1862. The 
construction of this ship soon came to the 
attention of the American minister, who at 
once represented to the foreign office the 
impropriety of permitting the delivery to the 
Confederacy of a vessel to be used against 
the commerce of the United States. 

The duties of neutrals, according to the 
accepted rules of international law, do not 
prevent the traffic in munitions of war 
between their subjects and those of the 
belligerents, but they do forbid direct en- 
gagement in the war or the use of the neu- 
tral country as a military or naval base. 
Accordingly, Mr. Adams contended that 
since the Confederacy was under blockade 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 89 

it would not be practicable to deliver the 
vessel into a Confederate port before commis- 
sioning her. Instead, she would start upon 
her career from England or the high seas, 
and in either case would involve the Brit- 
ish government in a violation of neutrality. 

Repeatedly during the summer of 1862 
Adams urged the foreign office to seize 
"No. 290, " as the offending cruiser was known 
upon the books of Laird Brothers. But he 
found the British government reluctant to 
see evidence pointing to her illegal character, 
and slow to act. When at the last minute 
the law officers advised that she might be 
held, it was too late. The ship was nearly 
done in July, when rumor informed the 
Confederate agents that arrest was probable. 
They acted quickly, ran her out of English 
waters on July 28, and took her to sea un- 
armed. The equipment, guns, and ammuni- 
tion left England from a different port and 
met "No. 290" in the Azores, where she was 
christened "Alabama," and ran up the Con- 
federate flag. Under the command of Raphael 
Semmes she set about her work, and gained 
a notoriety out of all proportion to her size. 
Her burden was only 1040 tons; her length 
220 feet. The British papers chronicled her 
escape and chuckled at the clever shrewd- 
ness with which the law had been evaded. 
An unarmed vessel had left Liverpool, and 
could not be considered a violation of neu- 
trality; a cargo of munitions had left a 



90 THE CIVIL WAR 

different port in a legal traffic; where was 
there anything for the astute Yankee min- 
ister to lay his hands upon? The reply of 
Adams was that in matters maritime the 
intent governs the act, that violators of the 
law always seek to disguise their acts, that 
it was the duty of Great Britain to prevent 
evasions and to have ample laws empowering 
her servants to act efficiently; and, finally, 
that the United States would hold her 
responsible for every injury done by the 
"Alabama" or her kind. 

In vain, for the present, Adams collected 
his evidence and presented his claims. Brit- 
ish opinion ran high against American pre- 
tension in the second year of the war, and 
talk not only of mediation but of recognition 
was in the air. McClellan's reputed genius 
had accomplished little, and sober English- 
men began to think that the Confederacy 
would make good its determination. In a 
speech at Newcastle in October, the chan- 
cellor of the exchequer, William E. Glad- 
stone, spoke of the American situation, 
saying, in ominous words for Mr. Adams's 
peace of mind, "There is no doubt that 
Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South 
have made an army; they are making, it 
appears, a navy; and they have made, what 
is more than either — they have made a 
nation." So far definitive action by the 
government had been warded off. The 
sympathies of England were clearly with 



AFLOAT AND ABROAD 91 

the South, but her cabinet was unlikely to 
sacrifice any interest to these while the 
military outcome remained in doubt. For 
another year, until the emancipation procla- 
mation and the Union victories had changed 
the outlook, Adams had constantly to be on 
the alert to explain, or soothe, or rebuke. 



CHAPTER VI 

1862: McCLELLAN AND EMANCIPATION 

"On to Richmond" had begun to be the 
cry of the Union even before the fiasco of 
Bull Run. Temporarily silenced by the evi- 
dence of unpreparedness, it did not echo 
loudly again until the army of the Potomac 
took shape under the skilful hands of Mc- 
Clellan in the autumn, but through the 
early winter the pressure for an immediate 
advance increased. McClellan at his head- 
quarters saw all the obstacles in the road of 
that advance. 

Between the two rival capitals, Washing- 
ton and Richmond, the distance as the crow 
flies is about one hundred miles. But the 
intervening country could hardly have been 
less adapted to the movements of armies 
if nature had exerted herself to discourage 
them. The Potomac and the James, on 
which the two cities lie, run nearly parallel. 
Between them the Rappahannock and the 
York, with a network of branches, cross 
every direct line of march, and fill with 
marsh and swamp, almost uncharted in 
1862, such portions of the country as were 

92 



94 THE CIVIL WAR 

not already obstructed by dense forests. 
Bounded on the east by the river mouths 
widening into Chesapeake Bay, some sixty 
miles from the direct line, the region is 
bounded on the west, at a similar distance, 
by the hills of the Blue Ridge, behind which, 
running northeast through the great valley, 
the Shenandoah River waters a fertile farm 
land and empties into the Potomac at Har- 
per's Ferry. Here, in an area slightly over 
one hundred miles square, was the battle- 
field which became the inevitable seat of 
the war in the East when the Confederacy 
fixed its place of government at Richmond, 
the capital of Virginia. Regardless of its 
military importance or strategic value, which 
was slight, eastern Virginia was forced to 
the front because of the necessity upon each 
government to defend its capital and threaten 
that of the enemy. Always an embarrass- 
ment to either government, yet not decisive 
upon the outcome of the war, the fighting 
between Washington and Richmond was 
on a larger and more costly scale than any 
other. 

The Napoleonic plan which McClellan 
had conceived in 1861 involved the creation 
at Washington of an army of a quarter- 
million or more, with which, overawing all 
resistance, he could march through Rich- 
mond to the southern limit of the Confed- 
eracy. The project might not have been 
impossible had either people or government 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 95 

been willing to wait until the gigantic force 
was ready for use. Before the year was over» 
Lincoln thought that an advance upon Rich- 
mond, at least, might be begun, and was 
disposed to urge it along the direct line be- 
cause such an advance would keep the Army 
of the Potomac always between Washington 
and the enemy. In vain he struggled to 
get McClellan to move before Christmas, or 
in the early spring; and when the general 
finally consented to start, he had changed 
his plan, abandoned the direct attack, and 
determined to ship his force by sea to the 
peninsula between the York and the James, 
up which he might march upon Richmond 
with less natural obstruction to overcome. 
Grateful for movement on any plan, Lincoln 
co-operated with the manoeuvre, only stip- 
ulating that Washington must not be left 
uncovered. Over the interpretation of this 
stipulation the peninsular campaign of 1862 
broke down. 

It was the belief of McClellan that a vigor- 
ous attack upon Richmond would be Wash- 
ington's best defence. It would compel the 
enemy to concentrate his whole army at his 
own threshold. But Lincoln's advisers were 
nervous unless an actual army was stationed 
around the District of Columbia, and as 
soon as McClellan had started the President 
yielded to political pressure and organized 
three armies for the greater security of the 
capital. One was in western Virginia, where 



96 THE CIVIL WAR 

there was no enemy, but where Fremont, 
who had to have a command, could be sta- 
tioned; another was in the Shenandoah Valley 
under Banks, guarding the "back door" to 
Washington; the third was under McDowell, 
at Washington. It is the opinion of many 
military experts that this caution of the 
President was both needless and unwise, 
and that McClellan's plan was right; yet 
without these troops, diverted from his com- 
mand for political reasons, McClellan started 
up the Peninsula in the spring in 1862 with 
a larger army than could be placed in the 
field against him. 

The Confederate army, acting upon the 
orders of President Davis, who believed him- 
self a great strategist, was organized for a 
defensive campaign around Richmond and 
contained among its leaders two generals 
who would have been famous in any company, 
and who outclassed McClellan. The Union 
army, during April and May, advanced up 
the Peninsula, from Yorktown to Williams- 
burg, across the Chickahominy, and was 
almost in sight of the city of Richmond before 
General Robert E. Lee left his desk, where 
he had been chief military adviser to Davis, 
to take command of the Confederate army. 
After two months of hard fighting, McClellan 
had about 100,000 men before Richmond in 
June. Lee had 30,000 less. But the campaign 
had already been made a failure by the exer- 
tions of "Stonewall" Jackson. 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 97 

It was at Bull Run, in 1861, that Thomas 
Jonathan Jackson, a Virginia Scotch-Irish- 
man, having placed his brigade in the strong- 
est position in the Confederate line, held it 
there until he had earned the nickname 
"Stonewall." Neither his brilliancy nor 
his profound strategy had come to him by 
accident. A deliberate student of military 
history, he had taught himself the larger 
things which he had not learned at West 
Point or in the Mexican War. For ten years 
before the Civil War he was professor in a 
Virginia military school for boys, preparing 
against the day when he should return to 
the field. Honest, narrow, devout, no repu- 
tation of the Civil War is more secure or 
picturesque than his. A tremendous lover 
of truth in private life, as a commander he 
deceived and misled everyone but himself, 
keeping the enemy entirely ignorant of his 
movements until they were accomplished, 
and giving even his friends little inkling of 
his real intent. Like the old Puritans, he 
fought best after prayer. "The General," 
said his body-servant, Jim, "is a great man 
for prayin'. He pray night and mornin' — 
all times. But when I see him get up several 
times in the night, an' go off an' pray, den I 
know there is goin' to be somethin to pay, an' 
I go right away and pack his haversack." 

While McClellan was yet marching up the 
Peninsula, Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley 
was endangering his campaign. Through 



98 THE CIVIL WAR 

April and May he created the impression of 
having a large force ready to plunge down the 
Valley the instant McClellan got away. 
Masking both his intentions and his small 
force, he first deceived and then defeated 
Banks, who commanded the Union army in 
the Valley, and frightened Lincoln into efforts 
to crush him by the concerted movements of 
the three armies of Fremont, Banks, and 
McDowell. Jackson eluded the attack, and 
as soon as it was thoroughly under way he 
slipped out of the Valley, reporting in Rich- 
mond with his army in the end of June. He 
had tied up a great and useless Union force 
on the Shenandoah, and was now ready to 
help Lee with McClellan. 

Whether McClellan needed McDowell's 
army or not is a matter for military critics, 
but there can be no difference of opinion 
that the diversion created by Jackson's ma- 
noeuvre broke his confidence. By the last 
week in June the success of his campaign 
was questionable. Through July he only 
held his own. And in August the Army 
of the Potomac was recalled from the Pen- 
insula. McClellan reported his return to 
Washington a day or two before his suc- 
cessor in the public favor collapsed. 

If there had been nothing to offset Mc- 
Clellan's campaign, the spring of 1862 would 
have been indeed doleful. The British- 
built Confederate navy was getting to sea 
and the public had not yet realized how 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 9a 

important were the armies in the West. But 
the navy, non-poHtical and efficient, was 
making progress. Its first triumph closed 
the period of the wooden battleship. 

Early in 1862 the naval defence of Wash- 
ington was endangered by the Confederates' 
possession of the hulk of the "Merrimac," 
seized and armored after the abandonment 
of the Norfolk navy yard, and rechristened 
the " Virginia." Before this impregnable 
gunboat frigate after frigate collapsed, until 
on March 9 she met the new invention of 
Ericsson, the turret "Monitor." No bat- 
tleship less orthodox than the "Monitor" in 
her appearance ever floated; nor did any 
look less dangerous than she, with her small 
cylindrical gun-house upon her nearly sub- 
merged deck. But the naval duel in Hamp- 
ton Roads that day determined the course of 
naval construction for two generations, and 
rendered obsolete nearly every navy in the 
world. Yet the old frigates of the United 
States navy did some more service before 
they were broken up. In April Farragut, 
wearied with the difficulties of blockading 
the many mouths of the Mississippi, sailed 
up the river, ran the forts, and took posses- 
sion of New Orleans. With General Butler 
in command of the conquered city. New 
Orleans ceased to be a menace to the Union 
cause. Not squeamish in methods, and 
perhaps willing to profit by illicit trade, the 
latter nevertheless showed himself a com- 



100 THE CIVIL WAR 

petent ruler in cleansing the town and 
managing its affairs. 

While McClellan was winding up his cam- 
paign and complaining of the refusal of 
Lincoln to let him have McDowell, the ad- 
ministration had found new commanders and 
had placed its trust in them. These were 
Halleck, who, having superseded Fremont in 
the West, was now made general-in-chief, 
and military adviser at Washington, and 
Pope, who was called from the Mississippi 
Valley to command the three armies of 
Fremont, Banks, and McDowell. Pope was 
even less successful than McClellan had 
been, and lacked both the popularity and 
the prestige of his predecessor. Toward the 
end of August he was out-generalled and out- 
fought at the second battle of Bull Run, and 
on September 2, in despair and against the 
wishes of his cabinet, Lincoln called upon 
McClellan to resume command. 

It was high time for some one to take 
command. Lee, encouraged by his unwar- 
ranted success in frightening Washington 
and neutralizing the peninsular attack, had 
determined to carry the war into the North 
by way of the Shenandoah Valley. He still 
hoped that Maryland might rise against the 
oppressor and that it might be possible to 
dictate a peace on northern soil. There was 
no better general to rally and reorganize the 
discouraged Union armies than McClellan, 
but before his new command was two weeks 



1862: McCLELLAN — EIVIANCIPATION 101 

old he again missed his chance. Through 
a captured despatch he learned of a risky 
division of Lee's army, leaving either half 
at his mercy for a few hours. He thought 
it over all night instead of moving on the 
instant, and Lee closed up before it was too 
late. Paralleling Lee's army, as it moved 
north, McClellan had more than twice his 
numbers. On September 17, 1862, the armies 
met along the banks of Antietam Creek, 
near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where Lee made 
a brilliant stand. McClellan entered the 
fight with 87,000 Union troops, and with 
rifled cannon with which to oppose Lee's 
ragged 50,000. The aggregate losses ran 
to more than 20,000, and at the end of the 
day Lee, escaping in defiance of all the laws 
of strategy, started his retreat. The southern 
discouragement at the complete failure of 
Maryland to rise to expel the Union forces 
was surpassed by northern grief and bitter- 
ness that McClellan had not crushed Lee, and 
would not follow him in vigorous pursuit. 

Without molestation the Confederate army 
returned into Virginia, and the first invasion 
of the North was over. McClellan settled 
down to reorganize and rest. The hints and 
orders of the President that he cross the 
Potomac and resume the fight, he disregarded. 
Here, as elsewhere, he failed to realize that 
public opinion was a force to be estimated 
and accounted for, not to be ignored, and 
that it was Abraham Lincoln who was com- 



102 THE CIVIL WAR 

mander-in-chief of the armies and President 
of the United States. Five weeks after An- 
tietam, MeClellan entered Virginia, having 
allowed Lee ample time to prepare to re- 
ceive him. In the first week in November he 
had an advance in contemplation. But on 
November 7 he was relieved of his command 
by Lincoln who had at last yielded to the 
critics. Unsatisfactory as MeClellan was, 
he had no known superior in the Union 
ranks, and Burnside, his second successor, 
failed as signally as Pope. But this time 
his military eclipse was final. As a spec- 
tator he watched the rest of the war, gaining 
comfort from the sympathies of his adherents 
and considering himself the victim of vicious 
politics. "I think that I have done all that 
can be asked in twice saving the country," 
was his reflection. 

The career of MeClellan illustrates the 
unhappy mixture of politics and war that 
impeded the Union cause. In the Confed- 
eracy, independence was the one important 
object. To it all other needs were subor- 
dinate. But Lincoln was forced not only 
to maintain the Union, but to keep together 
a majority that could control his party and 
his Congress, in order that such maintenance 
might be assured. The unquestioning loy- 
alty of the spring of 1861 never returned. 
The Democratic party resumed its old work 
of obstruction. Republican radicals and 
conservatives both added their embarrass- 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 103 

ments. In no phase of his policy was his 
task more intricate during 1862 than it was 
with the citizens of the border states. 

During the poHtical campaign of 1860, 
through the trying months before his inaugu- 
ration, and as late as the battle of Bull Run, 
Lincoln and his party stood steadily for the 
permanence of the Union, no aggression 
against slavery in the states, and the restor- 
ation of the Constitution as it was before 
secession. But public opinion developed 
during 1861, until it became apparent to all 
that slavery was the fundamental cause of 
the loss of peace and life and property afflict- 
ing the United States. It became doubtful 
whether even the Union could be preserved; 
but if it was, the spirit which maintained 
it could not be content until it had ended 
not only the fact of resistance to the law but 
the cause which had produced it. Yet four 
slave states stood loyal to the Union. The 
abolition of slavery by force of arms or of 
determined majority would fall as the unfair 
reward for their loyalty upon the shoulders of 
the citizens of the border states. To avert 
this injustice and satisfy the rights of these 
states before the collapse of slavery, which 
he anticipated, was Lincoln's hope in the 
winter of 1861 and 1862. 

The temper of the Union respecting slavery, 
with which Lincoln had to deal in his nego- 
tiations, came out in the army, in Congress, 
and in public opinion. Twice he found that 



104 THE CIVIL WAR 

subordinate officers went more rapidly than 
he could follow. Fremont, in August, 1861, 
issued a military order of confiscation which 
emancipated the slaves of persons in insur- 
rection against the United States within his 
department. Abolitionists throughout the 
North received the proclamation with joy, 
— which may have been Fremont's motive 
for issuing it, — but Lincoln, after vainly giv- 
ing the author a chance to modify it, him- 
self disallowed it in a general order. In 
the next spring. Hunter, within a southern 
department, issued a similar order, which was 
likewise recalled. The comments through- 
out the North upon these unauthorized acts 
would have convinced a less sagacious poli- 
tician than Lincoln that opinion was shift- 
ing. In December, 1861, Congress, which 
had resolved in July that the war was 
only for the Union, refused to re-enact the 
resolution. 

Lincoln continued to maintain that under 
no conditions could Congress touch slavery 
in the states; but there were other regions 
whose dependence upon that branch of the 
government was a matter of prime Republi- 
can creed. Slavery, in the District of Colum- 
bia and in the territories, early came under 
attack, and was abolished in both before 
the summer of 1862. The disposition to 
abolish was not entirely humanitarian; in 
part it was vindictive, and the desire to 
punish, which could not encompass aboli- 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 105 

tion in the states, revealed itself in acts of 
confiscation. The war session of Congress, 
in 1861, passed a confiscation act which may 
be regarded as the first formal step against 
slavery. Butler, in Virginia, had already 
devised the term "contraband of war," to 
apply to slaves escaping into Union lines, 
and had used the contraband as camp labor- 
ers. The law of August, 1861, declared the 
confiscation of all persons or property used 
against the United States. Lincoln signed 
the act reluctantly, for retaliation was far 
from his desire. He was forever looking for- 
ward to the time when the war would be 
over, and every act of unnecessary cruelty 
would be a bar to reconciliation. The second 
confiscation act, of July, 1862, was even 
further from his wish. This declared that 
after sixty days all the property of persons 
holding military or civil office under the 
Confederacy should be liable to public con- 
fiscation. It is notable among civil wars that 
these acts were never fully carried out. Save 
in a few isolated instances, the most notable 
being Arlington, the home of General Lee, 
such property as was taken by the United 
States was restored at the close of the war. 
No general confiscation or proscription was 
ever applied. 

The temper toward the South shown in 
the debates on these measures served notice 
on Lincoln that. Constitution or no Consti- 
tution, the slavery matter was imminent, 



106 THE CIVIL WAR 

and he tried to save the border states. Com- 
pensated emancipation, with the consent of 
those concerned, was the measure which he 
advocated as just and expedient. It was 
just, because the holder of slave property 
had in no way violated the law, or the tra- 
dition of his region, and ought not to be 
forced to carry the whole cost of a change in 
national sentiment. It was expedient be- 
cause it would at once reward those who had 
been loyal in a time of stress, and discour- 
age the enemy. After citizens of Maryland 
or Kentucky had sold their slaves to the 
United States there would be no chance of 
their ever joining the Confederacy; while the 
financial advantage given to them might 
easily induce citizens of the Confederacy to 
press for peace and compensation. Indeed 
it was a habit of Lincoln to figure out the 
number of days in which the cost of keeping 
up the Union armies would equal the value 
of all the slaves, and to urge that if only as 
a measure of economy it would pay to pur- 
chase every slave in the United States. 

Acting upon his policy, Lincoln, in March, 
1862, urged Congress to offer to co-operate 
with any state desiring to emancipate its 
slaves, and held during the spring and sum- 
mer a series of conferences with represen- 
tatives of the border states in which he urged 
his measure upon them. Congress responded 
favorably to the President's suggestion, but 
the border states refused to act. Self-interest 



1862 : McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 107 

as well as obstinacy stood in the road of 
their compliance. In 1862 secession had not 
been proved a failure, and if the South were 
ever recognized as independent the border 
states would desire to join the Confeder- 
acy. The credit of the United States at this 
time was none too good. Its bonds, in which 
payment for slaves would probably have 
been made, were below par, and should the 
Union fail and the bonds collapse, the border 
citizens would have lost both their slaves 
and their remuneration. Beside interest, as 
it appeared to the border states, there also 
stood in the road of adjustment the reluc- 
tance of Democrats to co-operate heartily 
in any measure urged by Lincoln. By the 
middle of July Lincoln gave up his idea of 
compensated emancipation as hopeless, but 
reached at the same time the conclusion that 
emancipation was bound to come. 

Congress could not emancipate a single 
slave in any state, but Lincoln believed 
that the President, as commander-in-chief, in 
time of war, could properly harass the enemy 
by an attack upon their property. John 
Quincy Adams had long since told his south- 
ern opponents that the only menace to slavery 
was the war power of the President, which 
they threatened to provoke. And now 
Lincoln reached the conviction that only a 
military emancipation could save the Union. 
It was not the slave that he considered 
primarily, though he adhered to his belief 



108 THE CIVIL WAR 

that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is 
wrong." When in the summer Horace 
Greeley joined the throng of abolitionists 
that were worrying the President to convert 
the war into a war against slavery, Lincoln 
had already reached his conclusion but had 
not announced it. Greeley called his mani- 
festo "The Prayer of Twenty Millions of 
People," and it was typical of the man and 
the reformer. Extreme, ill-founded, far from 
true in the numerical backing which it 
claimed, it is only another evidence of the 
popular pressure. To it, Lincoln replied in a 
personal letter which went directly to the 
point, and revealed himself as standing where 
he always had stood. "My paramount ob- 
ject is to save the Union, and not either to 
save or destroy slavery," he wrote. "If I 
could save the Union without freeing any 
slave, I would do it. And if I could save it 
by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. 
And if I could save it by freeing some, and 
leaving others alone, I would also do that." 
On the constitutional side, if any slaves were 
to be freed nothing short of a constitu- 
tional amendment, save the war power of 
the President, could accomplish it. 

When the border states refrained from ac- 
cepting the principle of compensated eman- 
cipation, Lincoln determined that he must 
go along without them, and that at a suitable 
time it would be expedient to rally the North 
and discourage the Confederacy by executive 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 109 

emancipation. The first draft of his proc- 
lamation was written early in July, but it 
was not communicated to the cabinet until 
towards the end of the month, after Congress 
had adjourned. Then it was presented for 
information, not for debate. The man whom 
Seward had accused of having neither policy 
nor ability to frame one, had reached his 
conclusion unaided, and had announced it 
at liis own time. Verbal amendments to 
the proclamation were made, but the only 
serious criticism came from the secretary 
of state, who questioned the expediency of 
issuing such a proclamation after as disas- 
trous a campaign as the Peninsula had been. 
Issued in July or August, it would appear as 
a desperate effort in a forlorn cause. Con- 
vinced by the suggestion, Lincoln withheld 
the proclamation and prayed for such a vic- 
tory as might give it a proper appearance. 
When Pope collapsed at second Bull Run, 
his disappointment was great. When Mc- 
Clellan managed to check Lee at Antietam 
with nearly twice the latter's force, it was 
decided that a good-enough victory, at least 
the only one in sight, had been attained. 

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued 
the preliminary proclamation of emancipa- 
tion. Announcing first his continued belief 
in the principle of compensation, and calling 
attention to the confiscation acts of Congress, 
he declared that on January 1, 1863, "all 
persons held as slaves within any State or 



110 THE CIVIL WAR 

designated part of a State the people whereof 
shall be in rebellion against the United 
States shall be then, thenceforward, and 
forever free." 

The North was taken by surprise when the 
emancipation proclamation appeared, and 
misunderstood its bearings then, as it has, 
generally, ever since. Slavery was not af- 
fected by the preliminary proclamation, or 
by the final proclamation, which appeared 
on January 1, in any of the border states, 
or in any portion of the Confederacy not 
in actual resistance to the United States. 
Over citizens of the United States not engaged 
in insurrection the President could have no 
control, and claimed none. So far as his 
act had legal weight, it applied only to per- 
sons within what he designated as the rebel- 
lious area in his final proclamation. Yet so 
long as these remained rebellious and con- 
tinued to acknowledge only the jurisdiction 
of the Confederate government, they could 
not be reached and the proclamation could 
not be enforced against them. After they 
had submitted in any portion of the area, 
and become peaceful, it is highly doubtful 
whether any act of the President seques- 
trating their property was lawful. Only im- 
peachment could punish him for not aiding 
them to recover their property, but it is 
hard to believe that any United States court 
would have decided that their title to their 
slaves was extinguished. The emancipation 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 111 

proclamation did not free the slaves, but it 
served notice that the war had become an 
attack upon slavery as well as disunion, 
while legal steps sanctioned the policy an- 
nounced by Lincoln in less than three years. 

Emancipation by constitutional amend- 
ment had been urged in many congresses, 
and was defeated by adverse majorities until 
the end of 1864. After 1862 it became an 
administration measure, but the passage of 
an amendment accomplishing it was deferred 
until February, 1865. In the ten ensuing 
months the states gave it their support. 
Three-fourths of all, as the Constitution 
prescribes, had approved it when Seward 
issued, on December 18, 1865, his proclama- 
tion declaring that the thirteenth amend- 
ment had been adopted. Incorporating in 
its body the phrases of the memorable north- 
west ordinance of 1787, it declared that 
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
. . . shall exist within the United States, or 
any place subject to their jurisdiction." 

The hope of Lincoln that the emancipation 
proclamation would consolidate the North be- 
hind him was not realized at once. Abroad, 
the feeling towards the United States imme- 
diately grew better, but at home his act only 
widened the cleavage among factions, and 
brought him rebuke at the congressional 
elections of 1862. Seward had believed, in 
the loyal outburst after Sumter, that all 
party lines in the North were gone; but they 



112 THE CIVIL WAR 

were only submerged in a tide of emotion 
that ebbed away in the second year of the 
war. 

At best, Lincoln was supported by a tem- 
porary fusion of diverse elements. The 
abolitionists were the radicals among his 
backers and had Chase as their spokesman 
in the cabinet. Seward represented the 
moderate Republicans who were unionists 
above all else. The war Democrats, who had 
voted for Douglas and like him had stood 
by the Union, claimed McClellan as one of 
their number and were reached by Stanton, 
secretary of war. Bates and Blair were bor- 
der state Democrats, whose friends expected 
the Union to be maintained without damage 
to slavery. No single faction could control 
a majority in the North, and it was not 
certain that any single one could be spared. 
Yet to harmonize their interests was an 
almost impossible task, and more nearly 
broke down in the fall of 1862 than at any 
other time. Always among the avowed 
opposition were conservatives who sympa- 
thized with the South and denied the con- 
stitutionality of coercion. "Copperheads," 
as they came to be called, they harassed the 
President in his every act, and varied in 
conduct from open support of the Confed- 
eracy to severe criticism of the policy of 
the administration. Lincoln was never a 
good executive or disciplinarian. He rarely 
thought in terms of efficient administration. 



1862: McCLELLAN — EMANCIPATION 113 

More than once he tried to save law-breakers 
whose friends were necessary to his policy. 
But the fact that he managed, in any way, to 
conduct the Union cause with the sort of 
backing that he had, places him at the head 
of the world's consummate politicians. 

The immediate result of the emancipation 
proclamation was discouraging. Its critics 
outshouted its supporters in the North. In 
the elections conservatives everywhere gained 
a hearing and iinseated numerous Repub- 
licans. In 1860 Lincoln had carried every 
northern state except New Jersey. In 1862 
his party was ousted in a solid tier of states 
north of the border: — New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
and Wisconsin. Only by a bare majority 
did the Republicans retain their control of 
Congress, and it is fair to regard the elec- 
tion as a general vote of censure implying 
lack of confidence in the administration. 
The backwoods lawyer, whom political ma- 
nipulation had seated in the White House, 
had not yet convinced his country of his essen- 
tial greatness. His followers were only just 
beginning to identify the Republican party 
with the Union, and to maintain that the 
defeat of either would involve the downfaU 
of the other. The war, however, had to go 
on. McClellan was dismissed immediately 
after the election, and the country entered 
upon the darkest eight months in its history. 



CHAPTER Vn 

1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 

The war in the West was not confined 
to a narrow arena, bounded by two rival cap- 
itals and embracing an area that remained 
for four long years unchanged. Instead, 
it ranged from the Ohio River to the Gulf 
of Mexico and followed up the tributaries of 
the Mississippi until it reached the limit of 
Confederate resistance, wherever that might 
be. It contained few scenes of marching up 
and down, with loud confusion, voluminous 
dust, and lack of progress, but was a con- 
tinuous development, from the days of 1861, 
when loyal citizens of Missouri were organ- 
ized into a committee of safety, until, after 
four years, the armies of the West completed 
their advance down the Mississippi Valley, 
around the Allegheny Range, and up against 
the armies of Virginia from the South. 

The centre of the stage in that great west- 
ern theatre of war was the mouth of the 
Ohio River, where the straggling town of 
Cairo stood on stilts to avoid the floods which 
repeatedly washed over the southern tip of 
Illinois. Here, "within a radius of twenty- 

115 



116 THE CIVIL WAR 

five miles, is the centre of the Mississippi 
Valley, whence easy routes of communication 
lead in every direction. The Ohio River, 
with its extensive northern tributaries, great 
canals, and numerous railroads, afforded to 
all the North ready access to this point. 
Entering the Ohio, from the south, only a 
few miles above its mouth, come two other 
rivers of almost equal importance. The 
Cumberland, sweeping down from the moun- 
tains of eastern Kentucky, could be as- 
cended easily to Nashville, the capital of 
Tennessee. South of the Cumberland, and 
parallel to it near its mouth, the Tennessee 
empties into the Ohio the drainage of several 
states. The Mississippi River, carrying the 
waters of all these, gives the broadest of 
natural highways to the sea. 

In a country sparsely settled, where no 
large army could live upon the near-by land, 
but must carry with it all its food, munitions, 
and clothing, transportation routes were of 
supreme importance. The rivers dominating 
the Southwest were supplemented by two 
great railways, and an uncompleted third, 
that fixed by their location the strategic 
centres subordinate to the mouth of the 
Ohio. Some twenty miles below Cairo, on 
the Mississippi, at Columbus, Kentucky, 
was the northern terminus of the Mobile 
and Ohio Railroad which ran parallel to 
the Mississippi and furnished connections 
to New Orleans and Mobile. At right angles 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 117 

to this road, and not far south of the great 
bend of the Tennessee River, ran the most 
important east and west railway of the South, 
the Memphis and Charleston. Cairo, Colum- 
bus, and the mouths of the Cumberland 
and Tennessee constituted the primary stra- 
tegic centre; the secondary centres were in a 
line along this road, at Memphis, where it 
touched the Mississippi, at Corinth, where it 
crossed the Mobile and Ohio, and at Chat- 
tanooga, in eastern Tennessee, where it 
touched the Tennessee River and was met 
by other roads from both Georgia and Vir- 
ginia. South of the Memphis and Charleston, 
and parallel to it, another line to the east 
extended from Vicksburg, through Jackson, 
into Alabama and Georgia. It was com- 
pleted after the war began. 

The Civil War was well advanced before 
the importance of the western field was 
recognized. Habit, as well as Washington 
and Richmond, turned general attention 
towards the East. In the West heavy fighting 
went almost unnoticed save by the north- 
west states whose boys were being killed, 
and generals acquired real skill in the routine 
performance of their duties before the public 
discovered their existence and put them in 
the illuminated places of eminence. 

Missouri, the old storm centre of the slavery 
quarrel, was torn to pieces by the divergent 
forces of Union and secession. Her governor 
in 1861, a rampant secessionist, thought 



118 THE CIVIL WAR 

to organize his state for the Confederacy. 
"Your requisition in my judgment," he re- 
pHed to Lincoln on the call for volunteers, 
"is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolution- 
ary in its object, inhuman and diabolical, 
and cannot be complied with." Opinion in 
St. Louis ran high. On a street car a splut- 
tering youth was heard to bluster that 

"Things have come to a pretty pass 

when a free people can't choose their own 
flag. Where I come from if a man dares to 
say a word in favor of the Union we hang 
him to a limb of the first tree we come to." 
He subsided only when his neighbor retorted 
that "after all, we are not so intolerant in 
St. Louis as we might be; I have not seen 
a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one; 
there are plenty of them who ought to be, 
however." The youth's excitement was 
provoked by the seizure, in May, of the 
arsenal, and the arrest of the Confederate 
militia by the combined efforts of Francis 
P. Blair, Jr., and a captain of the regular 
army, Nathaniel Lyon. 

During the summer months, until his 
death at Wilson's Creek in August, Lyon 
held Missouri. There was heavy fighting 
in the southern half of the state, nominally 
directed by Major-General John C. Fremont, 
from his headquarters in St. Louis. But 
until Fremont was removed in November 
no constructive plan was adopted for the 
protection of the division of the West. Hal- 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 119 

leek, who sueeeeded him, had eommand of 
the Union forces of the upper Mississippi 
Valley, and as far east as the Cumberland 
River. Next to him, in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Kentucky, Buell was in charge. 

The strategic importance of the Cairo 
region was acted upon by the Confederate 
leaders before it was seen elsewhere. Leon- 
idas Polk, after he had laid aside his bishop- 
ric and gone back to the army of his youth, 
seized the river end of the Mobile and Ohio 
railway, at Columbus, Kentucky, and be- 
gan the fortification of the Tennessee and 
Cumberland rivers at points where they are 
only twelve miles apart, near the southern 
boundary of Kentucky. His superior officer, 
Albert Sidney Johnston, in command of the 
western forces of the Confederacy, followed 
up Polk's design, hurried on the construction 
of the Cumberland and Tennessee forts, and 
stretched his line up into central Kentucky. 
With divisions of his army in western, mid- 
dle, and eastern Tennessee, he prepared for 
a general advance through Kentucky to the 
Ohio River, despite the neutrality which 
Governor Magoffin of that state had excitedly 
proclaimed. The keen regard of the Con- 
federate leaders for the sovereignty of their 
own states was blunted in the case of a 
neutral state. When Halleck took com- 
mand in November, 1861, Johnston had 
been perfecting his first line of defence for 
two months. 



120 THE CIVIL WAR 

The first step against Johnston was taken 
in September by one of Fremont's subor- 
dinates named Grant, a retired regular cap- 
tain, who had entered a volunteer regiment 
of Illinois, and had speedily been given a 
brigade of the inexperienced, disorderly, west- 
ern regiments. At the end of August, Grant 
was assigned control of Missouri and Illi- 
nois, below St. Louis, and on September 4 
he established his headquarters at Cairo, 
which he estimated at once at its strategic 
importance. A few days later he seized 
commanding stations at the mouths of the 
Cumberland and Tennessee, and kept garri- 
sons not only at Cairo but at Paducah. The 
citizens of the latter had expected to welcome 
the Confederate outposts when Grant moved 
in. The "neutral" governor of Kentucky 
inquired by what right the sovereignty of the 
state was thus invaded. When Halleck 
arrived. Grant had the nucleus of an army 
waiting for him at the place where it could 
best be used. 

WTiile McClellan was drilling along the 
Potomac, Grant lay waiting at Cairo with a 
few regiments. The way to attack John- 
ston's line of defence was obvious, but not 
until the middle of the winter would Halleck 
authorize a joint movement by Grant and 
the gunboats on the river against the Con- 
federate forts that closed the Cumberland, 
Tennessee, and Mississippi to further ad- 
vance, — forts Donelson, Henry, and Island 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 121 

No. 10. The day after the orders to move on 
Fort Henry were received, the expedition was 
on its way. The spirit of its leader, who had 
almost no professional soldiers under him, 
has a novel ring among the notes of protest 
and explanation that crowd the records. 
Movements were slow because of mud and 
rain, he wrote; but this, however, "will op- 
erate worse upon the enemy, if he should 
come out to meet us, than upon us." With 
a celerity not seen thus far in any operation 
of the war, the first Confederate line was 
broken. 

The advance upon Fort Henry began on 
February 2, and ended four days later in 
the surrender of the fort. Its commander 
had foreseen the futility of a stand here, and 
had slipped out most of his troops, marching 
them across the narrow neck of land to Fort 
Donelson, before the attack began. The 
whole Confederate line was thrown into 
a panic by the prospect of a movement on 
Donelson, since, should this fall, Nashville 
lay undefended and Tennessee would be 
opened to the Union invader. 

Immediately upon the capture of Fort 
Henry, Grant prepared to take Fort Don- 
elson, and called upon Halleck for re- 
enforcements. Before the gunboats could go 
down the Tennessee and come back up the 
Cumberland the army had invested the 
fort and its 20,000 defenders with some 
15,000 men, who were shortly re-enforced 



122 THE CIVIL WAR 

to 27,000. The panic existing within thfc 
Confederate army was unknown to Grant, 
but he, as well as Johnston, could see the 
strategic outcome. 

Within Fort Donelson private apprehen- 
sions were added to public fears. Floyd, 
in command, had been secretary of war 
in Buchanan's cabinet, and was popularly 
believed to have betrayed his post by dis- 
tributing United States stores where the 
Confederacy could get them. His dishonest 
intent has been well-nigh explained away, but 
the incompetence which he had shown in the 
war department, added to his fear of personal 
capture, destroyed what small usefulness he 
had. With the concurrence of his subor- 
dinates, he fled. His second in command. 
Pillow, escaped with him. Buckner, the 
third in rank, stood by the fort, loaded up 
the haversacks of his men, and organized 
a sortie in the hope of saving the army. 

On the morning of February 15, the United 
States army stood, wet and unhappy, on the 
rough, frozen mud around Fort Donelson. 
Its commander was holding a conference 
with Foote aboard one of the gunboats in 
the Cumberland, and was contemplating 
the unpleasantness of a siege. As he landed 
for the ride back to camp, he learned that 
the Confederates had started an attack. Sur- 
prised by this, for he had had no idea of 
having a fight unless he provoked it. Grant 
hurried back. He understood Buckner's plan 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 123 

to escape only when he knew that the troops 
were carrying their haversacks. To rally 
his startled brigades, and spring a counter 
attack against that portion of the Confed- 
erate line which was being abandoned, took 
little time. Not over 4000 got away; the 
others returned to the fort. At daybreak on 
the 16th the Union commander could send 
in his laconic reply to a request for terms: 
"No terms except an unconditional and 
immediate surrender can be accepted. I 
propose to move immediately upon your 
works." Buckner surrendered nearly 15,000 
troops that day. Nine days later, Nash- 
ville, the capital of Tennessee, was occupied 
by detachments from both Grant and Buell, 
without a fight. 

The spectacular capture of forts Henry and 
Donelson, coming at a time when McClellan 
was just preparing to move into the Penin- 
sula, and when Union victories were few and 
far between, made Grant a major-general of 
volunteers and ended the period of hearty 
co-operation from his chief, Halleck. Though 
rebuffing Grant's first overtures upon the 
campaign, Halleck had finally worked ear- 
nestly with Grant and Foote. Official credit 
for the success came to him as chief in com- 
mand, and his department was extended to 
include the army of Buell. Hereafter his 
support ceased to be either regular or vig- 
orous, and suspicions of the competence of 
Grant entered his mind. So suspicious was 



124 THE CIVIL WAR 

he, that the immediate advance up the rivers 
which Grant desired was forbidden, until 
Johnston had organized his defence along 
the second Confederate line, Memphis, Cor- 
inth, and Chattanooga. 

The logical termination of the Donelson 
campaign was left to Pope, who was, in 
March, sent against the forts in the Mis- 
sissippi near New Madrid and Island No. 10. 
After manoeuvring the enemy out of the 
village, with the co-operation of Foote's 
gunboats he compelled the surrender of the 
island, receiving some 7000 prisoners from 
its garrison. Missouri hereafter was detached 
from the main Confederate line, and though 
much fighting remained to be done, in a 
population that was divided against itself, 
it ceased to play a part in the larger strategy 
of the war. 

Upon the extension of his command in 
March, Halleck directed from St. Louis two 
considerable armies in the field, that of Buell 
at Nashville, and that of Grant at Fort Henry. 
It is difficult to prove that he had a deliberate 
plan of campaign. The most probable aim 
appears to have been to unite the two forces 
at some point on the Tennessee River, near 
the crossing of the Mobile and Ohio and 
the Memphis and Charleston railways, 
from which point the latter railway could 
be broken. He hoped to induce the enemy 
to retreat from Corinth. The destruction of 
the hostile army appears not to have been 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 125 

undertaken. It was the occupation of points 
that dominated Halleck's mind. Remote 
from the scene of action, perplexed by a 
double manoeuvre, and aggravated by the 
political situation in Missouri, he rarely 
knew the exact status at the front, and 
directed a less successful campaign than his 
subordinates could have carried out alone, or 
than he would have carried out if in the field. 
The success of the occupation of the line 
of the Memphis and Charleston depended 
upon the celerity with which Grant and 
Buell brought their armies together, before 
the Confederate line could be re-formed. 
Johnston had withdrawn his force from 
central Kentucky upon the fall of Nash- 
ville, and had hurried from Murfreesboro to 
Hunts ville, in Alabama, and thence down 
the left bank of the Tennessee towards 
Corinth. At Corinth, Beauregard organized 
the troops on the left of the Confederate 
line. By the last week in March the two 
forces had been joined without interfer- 
ence, Johnston had assumed command of the 
whole, and was preparing not only to de- 
stroy Grant and Buell, in succession, but to 
march across the lost region to the Ohio. 
He had 50,000 troops, with whom to march, 
as he told them, "to a decisive victory over 
the agrarian mercenaries sent to subjugate 
and despoil you of your liberties." It was a 
fiction much used in proclamations by Con- 
federate leaders that the northern troops 



126 THE CIVIL WAR 

were both cowards and mercenaries; while 
theirs were gentle, brave, and chivalrous. 
Yet the Confederate, Bragg, only a few 
days before this proclamation of Johnston, 
had written that the whole country "seems 
paralyzed. . . . The unrestrained habits of 
plunder and pillage have done much to pro- 
duce this state of affairs and reconcile the 
people of the country to the approach of the 
enemy, who certainly do them less harm than 
our own troops." 

Grant had been prevented from acting 
quickly by the perplexing and contradictory 
orders of Halleck, but toward the end of 
March he threw his army into camp along 
the left bank of the Tennessee, at Pittsburg 
Landing, while Buell, entirely independent of 
his control, was hurrying up from the north- 
east. Neither Grant, nor Sherman, in whom 
he placed complete confidence, anticipated 
a vigorous attack from Johnston, and the 
disorder which prevailed in the Union camp 
is explained rather than excused by the 
extreme rawness of his troops. Most of the 
men had never been under fire, or even seen 
the enemy. When, in the early morning of 
April 6, Johnston opened a general engage- 
ment, it was several hours before the Union 
leaders realized that it was more than one 
of the skirmishes that had amused their 
outposts daily for two weeks. When they 
learned the magnitude of the attack, it was 
almost too late to save the day. 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 127 

With somewhat over 40,000 troops, John- 
ston entered at daybreak upon a pitched 
battle, that raged all day between Shiloh 
Church and Pittsburg Landing, and left his 
army that night on the Union line, to eat 
captured rations and sleep in federal tents. 
Grant had some 2000 more, and always 
maintained that, without aid, he could have 
won the battle. On both sides, regiments 
broke and fled repeatedly, the incessant 
hammering getting on the nerves of the 
green farmers' boys in either army. John- 
ston himself was slain in the afternoon while 
trying to rally one frightened regiment. His 
successor, Beauregard, prepared that night 
to fight it out on the 7th, and telegraphed to 
Richmond that victory was already won. 
"I am able to announce to you, with entire 
confidence," wrote Davis in a special mes- 
sage to the Confederate Congress, "that it 
has pleased Almighty God to crown the 
Confederate arms with a glorious and de- 
cisive victory over our invaders." 

The Confederate rejoicing was somewhat 
premature, however. On the night of the 
6th, Buell came up with 20,000 fresh troops 
in the Army of the Ohio. They were tired 
with forced marching, but their nerves had 
not been unstrung by fight and slaughter. 
On the morning of the 7th they took the 
front, and before the day was done the Con- 
federate army was in retreat towards Corinth. 

Among the battles of the Civil War, this 



128 THE CIVIL WAR 

engagement at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, 
as southern writers prefer to call it, has evoked 
more acrimonious dispute than any other. 
On any basis it was a great fight, with 100,000 
men engaged, and 20,000 of them killed or 
wounded at the close of the second day. It 
has been asked, — Was Grant surprised .f* — 
Was he defeated on the 6th? — Did BuelFs 
army save him. 5^ The armies of the Ten- 
nessee and the Ohio have answered all these 
differently when they have gathered at their 
camp-fires and reunions. In part, they will 
remain forever unanswered, but it seems 
clear from Grant's own words that he was 
unprepared for an engagement of such mag- 
nitude. Yet he kept his courage, re-formed 
his broken lines, admitted no defeat, and it 
is by no means certain that Buell's army was 
indispensable to his salvation. 

McClellan, in the East, was still worrying 
his way up the Peninsula when Shiloh added 
the second to the great Union victories in 
the West. Halleck, aroused by the size of 
the battle, hurried down from St. Louis to 
reorganize the armies, and resume his scru- 
tiny of Grant. Donel^on had begun with 
Grant absent from the field; at Shiloh he 
was unprepared; and his chief may be par- 
doned for wondering whether the victories 
were won because of Grant's efforts, or in 
spite of them. 

The advance of the army had been slow 
when Halleck directed it from St. Louis; 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 129 

with him in camp it was still more delib- 
erate than Beauregard's retreat to Corinth. 
Slowly and carefully, as all the books of 
military tactics prescribe, Halleck made his 
steps toward the railway crossing that had 
been the objective of his campaign. When 
he was at last ready to assault, Beauregard 
evacuated Corinth. Memphis fell of its 
own weight when Corinth became a Union 
camp. By the middle of June the Mississippi 
was clear of Confederate armies from Cairo 
to Vicksburg, while the second Confederate 
line had lost its centre and its western end. 
The capture of New Orleans by the navy 
added another to the western successes. 
From the view of the war department, Hal- 
leck had planned and executed Donelson, 
Shiloh, and Corinth. He had certainly 
brought order out of Fremont's chaos. It 
was reasonable that he should be summoned 
east when the government needed an ad- 
viser. When the campaign in the Peninsula 
was given up, he was made general-in-chief. 
Pope was taken east about the same time to 
organize the army of Virginia for the defence 
of Washington. 

After the fall of Corinth, the alternatives 
confronting Halleck's army pointed towards 
the immediate occupation of Vicksburg, 
which would complete the opening of the 
Mississippi, or that of Chattanooga, which 
would control the junction of the three rail- 
ways from Memphis, Atlanta, and Rich- 



ISO THE CIVIL WAR 

mond. Neither solution was undertaken, 
promptly; instead, the armies were scattered 
to hold the places and reconstruct the rail- 
ways that had fallen into Union hands. Be- 
fore a man of Halleck's deliberateness could 
have begun anew, his promotion because of 
the deeds of his subordinates removed him to 
another sphere of action, and left the west- 
ern control divided. Grant succeeded to the 
armies west of the middle of Tennessee, 
while Buell retained his command of those 
east of this point, his old Army of the Ohio. 
But the removal of Halleck and the division 
of the forces were not without their compen- 
sations, since they left the field commanders 
in command, and placed Halleck where his 
meddling could do less harm. Grant, en- 
trusted with the armies of the Mississippi and 
the Tennessee, was somewhat more successful 
than Buell in the disposition of his troops. 

Ulysses S. Grant, who now gained his 
first independent command, with no superior 
but the general-in-chief at Washington, had 
been the subject of distrustful inquiry ever 
since he became a colonel of Illinois volun- 
teers, and remains to-day something of an 
enigma. "At the age of thirty-nine. Grant 
was an obscure failure in a provincial town," 
writes the briefest and most brilliant of his 
biographers. He was born in Ohio, bred as a 
farmer's boy, and destined for the trade of 
tanner, which he refused. Unable to pro- 
vide him with a different trade, his father 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 131 

procured for him a political appointment to 
West Point, where he was graduated in 1843, 
somew^hat below the middle of his class. 
In the Mexican War he was promoted for 
gallantry, and became a captain ten years 
after graduation. The next year, 1854, he 
threw up his commission under a cloud whose 
shadow has never left him. He drank too 
much, in a day when strong drinking was 
not generally a disqualification for office, 
and was in danger of dismissal from the 
service. The next seven years of his life 
were sad and discouraging. He drifted from 
place to place, having none of the business 
ability commonly called practical. At no 
time did he earn even a fair livelihood, or 
provide for his family more than a meagre 
sustenance. Slight of frame, silent to a 
fault, incurably simple in kind and habit, 
and driven from his profession by his own 
weakness, none could have anticipated a 
career for him in 1860. Lee and McClellan, 
of social standing and military brilliance, 
were marked men before the war began. 
Grant was distrusted, down and out. He 
did not overvalue himself, and when he 
volunteered his services, first to the adjutant- 
general at Washington, then to McClellan 
at Cincinnati, he thought of no greater re- 
sponsibility than that of colonel. Ignored 
in his applications, he took what came to 
him without complaint, and entered a volun- 
teer regiment in his adopted state. 



132 THE CIVIL WAR 

Slowly but inevitably he rose. Under 
stress he produced a will that his native 
indolence disguised. Well-known, and to his 
own detriment, by his superiors, no promo- 
tion came to him unearned. Halleck gave 
him as little rope as he could. McClellan 
had no confidence in him. After Fort Don- 
elson, he was relieved from command on 
scanty pretext which Halleck had not enough 
candor to admit when he restored him. After 
Shiloh, he was again superseded until Hal- 
leck was transferred to Washington. Yet 
he compelled promotion. The rumors of 
his past bad habits handicapped him more 
and more as he rose. There is no evidence 
that, during the war, drink at any time inter- 
fered with the performance of his duties. If 
it ever did, the loyalty that he inspired in all 
those who approached his person has led 
them to conspire to keep it secret. "I can't 
spare this man: he fights," said Lincoln 
when he thought of McClellan, and the Pen- 
insula, and the days after Antietam. When 
the virtuous and temperate approached, urg- 
ing him to dismiss such a bad example from 
command, he turned them off with his fa- 
mous rejoinder: "I wish I knew what 
brand of whisky he drinks. I would send 
a barrel to all my other generals." 

The bad reputation under which Grant 
suffered for another year, after the battle of 
Shiloh, was probably his military salvation. 
It steadied him, and kept from his ear the 



1862: THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 133 

vicious adulation that destroyed many of his 
colleagues. Tied to his task, within narrow 
limits, he learned his trade and improved 
his skill before he convinced Lincoln and the 
nation that in his simple person was the brain 
for which both had steadfastly searched. 

After the occupation of Corinth, the mili- 
tary movements west of the Mississippi, ex- 
cept as they were involved in the Vicksburg 
campaigns of 1863, ceased to be an important 
part of the main strategy of the war. Never 
had they been decisive, but all along the 
frontier, from Santa Fe to St. Paul, there 
were episodes, locally interesting and more 
or less connected with the war. 

On the extreme border of Texas, the mining 
regions and the old communities along the 
Rio Grande necessitated a campaign in 1861 
and 1862. Confederate forces actually pos- 
sessed themselves of New Mexico and part 
of Arizona, only to be driven out by a com- 
bined attack from Colorado and California. 
In Colorado territory, an enthusiastic gov- 
ernor, Gilpin by name, believed he saw a 
conspiracy to take the Pike's Peak camps 
over the Confederacy. With great vigor 
he enlisted the young prospectors of the 
territory into volunteer regiments, which 
certainly saved it from whatever danger 
threatened it. Farther north, the new state 
of Minnesota was afflicted towards the end 
of the year with a serious Indian uprising. 

The Sioux of the Minnesota Valley, above 



134 THE CIVIL WAR 

St. Paul, had been accumulating grievances 
against the United States for more than ten 
years before the war began. A casual fron- 
tier row in August, 1861, developed into a gen- 
eral attack that drove the settlers from the 
valley in wild distress. Nearly a thousand 
were slain; others were captured; and the 
occasion called for greater strength than 
Minnesota possessed. Her militia was aug- 
mented, and Pope, relieved of the Army of 
Virginia after the second battle of Bull Run, 
was sent to restore confidence on the north- 
west border. 

In Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas, the 
fighting was more orderly, but had little 
more permanent consequence than that on 
the outlying frontiers of Minnesota or New 
Mexico. In these three states the sentiment 
of the population had run high through the 
fifties when the fight over slavery was before 
Congress. When war came, many entered 
each army, while the least reputable of either 
side formed guerrilla bands that plundered 
and murdered at pleasure. Quantrill is the 
most notorious of these raiders. Price, in 
his attack upon Missouri, and Banks, in the 
Red River campaign of 1864, conducted 
the most notable of the formal campaigns. 
But none of these affected the general out- 
come. After one more campaign under Grant, 
the Mississippi became a Union river, and 
Confederate operations in the trans-Missis- 
sippi ceased to be important. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ULYSSES S. GRANT 

The occupation of Corinth, Mississippi, 
which ought to have occurred immediately 
after Shiloh, and probably would have if 
Halleck had not intervened with theory and 
authority, opened up two courses for con- 
sideration. Neither Vicksburg nor Chatta- 
nooga was beyond the reach of a vigorous 
general, had he acted at once, taking ad- 
vantage of the confusion in the Confeder- 
ate ranks caused by the repulse of April and 
the death of Albert Sidney Johnston. But 
first came a cautious tactician, and then re- 
organization of command, while the enemy 
profited by the respite and fortified both 
places. It was twenty months before the 
advantage gained at Shiloh was harvested. 

In the reorganization of the Confederate 
army, during the weeks of Union inaction, . 
Braxton Bragg became commander in the 
West, where Johnston had been, and con- 
trolled the whole Confederate line from 
Atlanta to Vicksburg. As June and July 
advanced it became clear that if any attack 
upon him were to come, it would be from 

135 



136 THE CIVIL WAR 

Buell, whose army Halleck had started to- 
wards Chattanooga. Accordingly he set out 
to control that place, where Johnston had 
collected large amounts of army stores, and 
where the highways opened into the heart 
of the Confederacy. In August, he appeared 
in person on the scene, with more than 
half his total force, and had closed all the 
approaches before Buell, who had started 
before him, had reached his destination. In- 
stead of seizing Chattanooga as the result 
of Shiloh, Buell found himself on the defen- 
sive in August. His enemy, encouraged, not 
only held his own in eastern Tennessee, but 
contemplated taking the initiative. 

September and October, 1862, were months 
of Confederate aggression. Lee's first in- 
vasion of the North was barely checked at 
Antietam on September 17. Bragg led an 
attack on Buell in the same month, while, 
at the left of his line. Van Dorn created a 
demonstration to hold Grant in the vicinity 
of Corinth. The motives inspiring Bragg's 
attack were similar to those of Lee. Eastern 
Tennessee was nearly as tepid towards seces- 
sion as western Virginia had been, and Ken- 
tucky was immovable thus far; yet the 
enthusiasts had not abandoned the hope of 
their aid or the illusion that only Union 
oppression prevented it. Bragg began his 
campaign in the end of August, trying to 
fire the lukewarm heart by a proclamation: 
"It is for you to decide whether our broth- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 137 

ers and sisters of Tennessee and Kentucky 
shall remain bondmen and bondwomen to 
the abolition tyrant, or be restored to the 
freedom inherited from their fathers." His 
raiders, Morgan and Forrest, were already 
showing the Confederate uniform in fields 
where the northern invader was a more fa- 
miliar object. 

Bragg was not certain as to his ultimate 
goal, Nashville, to the northwest, or Louis- 
ville, further away but due north. He chose 
the latter, finally, since Buell was concen- 
trating at Murfreesboro, between him and 
the former, and plunged across Tennessee 
into Kentucky. It would have been sounder 
strategy to take Nashville first, and use it 
as a base for the country further north, but 
Bragg's march was political as well as mili- 
tary, and was intended to show that the 
Union lines were not immune from inva- 
sion. Had Halleck refrained from weaken- 
ing Buell's command, the Confederate army 
ought to have been caught and destroyed. As 
it was, Buell raced the Confederate army to 
Louisville, arrived there first, and on October 
8, 1862, fought a battle at Perry ville, Ken- 
tucky, which checked the advance of Bragg, 
and started him on a retreat to Chattanooga. 
Though he had held the invader, Buell had 
lost the confidence of Halleck, and was forced 
at the end of October to transfer his command 
to Rosecrans, under whom it was named the 
Army of the Cumberland. If Perryville had 



138 THE CIVIL WAR 

done nothing more than give his chance to 
a brigadier named Sheridan, with eight raw 
regiments out of twelve, it would have been 
worth while. 

Confederate aggression from Chattanooga 
continued during the fall of 1862. Bragg 
fell back on his base, re-fitted, and started 
for Nashville, whither he ought to have gone 
originally. He got as far as Murfreesboro, 
in front of which town Rosecrans attacked 
him on the last day of the year. After three 
days' fighting at Stone's River, as this engage- 
ment is called, Bragg was so demoralized 
that his general officers urged him to retreat 
to save the army. He fell back at once to 
the hills around Chattanooga, while Rose- 
crans occupied Murfreesboro and both went 
into quarters for more than half a year. 

After the departure of Halleck, Grant had 
remained at Corinth with a widely scattered 
army, over which his command was only by 
inference until October. Halleck left him 
no plan, and apparently had no use for him 
except as he held on to Corinth and was 
ready to re-enforce Buell on demand. The 
administration used the time to get cotton 
out of the South for northern mills, and to 
permit a licensed trade with the enemy, ad- 
vantageous to the latter and demoralizing 
to the discipline as well as to the private 
honesty of the Union force. When Bragg 
started on his Kentucky raid, he left Van 
Dorn, with Price's army from Missouri, to 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 139 

hold Grant from sending help to Buell. In 
September Grant was thrown upon the defen- 
sive; directing an engagement at luka, on 
the 19th, he fought again, two weeks later, 
at Corinth, with the result that his position 
was secured from further attack. On Octo- 
ber 25 he was placed formally in command 
of the department of the Tennessee, and per- 
mitted to take the initiative against Vicks- 
burg that he desired. 

For ten months after October, 1862, Grant 
was on trial, and knew it. His enemies, who 
were more fluent and more plausible than 
himself, had the ear of the secretary of war 
and the general-in-chief. Army contractors, 
whose peculations he exposed, cotton brokers, 
whose pernicious influence upon morale he 
attacked, temperance advocates who thought 
him dissipated, co-operated to place him 
under suspicion and keep him there. Early 
in 1863, Charles A. Dana, a journahst who 
later was made assistant secretary of war, 
was inflicted upon him as a member of his 
official family, to watch his conduct and 
keep the administration informed. Grant 
brought upon himself much of this. He was 
a wretched correspondent, and his military 
reports were brief and general. He never 
had a better place for his papers than his 
coat pocket (resembling in this the admin- 
istrative technique of Lincoln, whose tall 
hat was a well-known receptacle for memo- 
randa), and the quiet persistence with which 



140 THE CIVIL WAR 

he followed up his own counsels often left 
the administration in doubt as to his real 
intent. He bore with Dana, with a modesty 
unusual in major-generals, and won him 
for a friend. 

Vicksburg, Grant's first goal, would have 
been inconvenient in approach, even if it 
had not been fortified in long anticipation 
of attack. Set on the Mississippi, just below 
the Yazoo Valley and its marsh lands which 
protected it on the north, it was perched 
at the northern extremity of a long range 
of high bluffs. These rose directly from the 
water's edge, making the town almost in- 
accessible from the west. The guns of its 
forts commanded long reaches of the river, 
above and below, making an assault impos- 
sible. Only on the east and southeast were 
dry approaches available, and these were 
heavily entrenched. Against these Grant 
started in the early winter, with Memphis 
as his base and Holly Springs as his supply 
station. 

It was to be a joint attack on Vicksburg, 
like that of the early spring on forts Henry 
and Donelson. Sherman was to drop down 
the river from Memphis, convoyed by the 
fleet, and try the fortifications by the water 
route. Grant, meanwhile, was to march 
overland against the rear, to drive the de- 
fending army of Pemberton back upon his 
entrenchments. Neither operation was a 
success; Grant failed to get near the city be- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 141 

cause of a successful raid that destroyed his 
stores at Holly Springs, while Sherman was 
turned back after a vain assault. The winter 
of 1862-1863 was passed in devising ways 
and means, in digging canals through the 
swamps and inventing schemes for getting 
round the batteries. The spring of 1863 
was well advanced before Grant reached his 
plan of action. 

With his army on the right bank of the 
Mississippi opposite Vicksburg, where he 
had placed it after the failure of his first 
attack. Grant came to the conviction that 
capture from the river side was out of the 
question. Only from the south or south- 
east was there any chance of success, but 
to get to Jackson, Mississippi, the natural 
centre for an attack from this direction, 
there were but two methods. He might go 
back to Memphis, and march south and 
inland from the river, with a good base at 
his rear, and hope for better things than in 
December, when the cowardice of an officer 
lost him Holly Springs. Such procedure 
was sound according to military principles, 
but would be a confession that the removal 
of the army to the right bank was a mistake. 
Or he might go down the river, running the 
batteries of Vicksburg with whatever risk it 
entailed, find a landing somewhere below, 
and march up upon the rear. Most of his 
advisers feared the rifled guns of Vicksburg, 
and a piece of comic opera engineered by 



142 THE CIVIL WAR 

Porter, of the fleet, showed how real that 
danger was. One dark night the Confed- 
erate sentinels of Vicksburg saw a monitor 
coming down the stream and gave the alarm. 
No one could see that she was only a scow, 
with pork-barrel funnels and dummy guns. 
The defenders opened a furious fire that 
proved the vigilance of their watch, and 
even blew up one of their iron-clad gunboats 
to avoid capture. Yet in spite of the risk. 
Grant determined to try this course. 

Sending Sherman up the river to create 
a diversion on the Confederate right, Grant 
put his army on transports, — river steamers 
of all sorts, manned mostly by volunteers 
from the ranks, — and, with the fleet as con- 
voy, ran the batteries in April, through a bom- 
bardment that was more spectacular than 
dangerous. Until this moment, Pember- 
ton, the favorite of Davis who commanded 
at Vicksburg, had been in the dark as to the 
Union intention. Now the plan was clear. 
Re-enforcements were called for, and the 
Confederate left was prepared to drive the 
invader back into the swamps. "Joe" John- 
ston, with an army in eastern Mississippi, 
tried to help. On the last day of April, 
Grant put his army back on the left bank 
of the Mississippi, at Bruinsburg, and began 
his march inland and to the north. 

In most military operations, a base is re- 
garded as essential, but Grant was getting 
further and further away from his. He 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 143 

fell tlie nervousness in Washington, that 
was likely to stop the course he had in mind, 
and realized that only the loyalty of his 
generals kept them active in a manoeuvre 
which they doubted. They felt none of the 
relief that he experienced at getting on dry 
land, even though Vicksburg was between 
him and his supplies. He needed none of 
these. He put five days' cooked rations in 
his haversacks, abandoned his trunks and 
tents, and with his own personal baggage 
consisting of "a brier- wood pipe, a pouch of 
tobacco, and a toothbrush," on a borrowed 
horse, he cheerfully left what little base he 
had. He wired his intentions to Halleck at 
the last minute, and then abandoned his 
communications before that cautious strate- 
gist could countermand his movements. To 
one who asked where his headquarters would 
be, he is said to have replied, "Ask Pem- 
berton." "No formalities," he later wrote, 
"were to retard our progress until a posi- 
tion was secured when the time could be 
spared to observe them." 

For ten days after May 7, 1863, Grant 
was busy in places unknown to the war 
department. Repeated engagements met 
him on all sides. His five days' rations were 
supplemented by the forage and the bacon 
of the countryside. His wagon trains were 
recruited from the farm wagons and the 
family coaches of the Yazoo delta. Pember- 
ton, in front of his left, and Johnston, to his 



144 THE CIVIL WAR 

right, were split apart. Jackson was taken 
from the latter on May 14, and all hope of 
joining the two Confederate armies was de- 
stroyed. By May 19, Pemberton was locked 
up within the city of Vicksburg, while Grant 
completely invested its fortifications, with 
his right wing resting on the Mississippi 
above and his left wing on the Mississippi 
below the town. Assaults failing, the Union 
army settled down to formal siege. Pem- 
berton's ability has always been doubted; 
his loyalty was questioned at the time of 
the investment, for he was northern born. 
Tradition gives his reply to his accusers: 
"When the last pound of beef, bacon, and 
flour; the last grain of corn; the last cow, 
and hog, and horse, and dog shall have been 
consumed, and the last man shall have 
perished in the trenches, then, and only 
then, will I sell Vicksburg." 

The siege of Vicksburg was so uncom- 
fortable to the besieged that they have 
remembered it with pride and satisfaction 
ever since. Their food gave out and disease 
came in. Men lived in caves and cellars to 
avoid Grant's bombs. Ink and vivacity 
remained to the city's press, but paper on 
which to use them disappeared. Along the 
lines of the opposing pickets there was much 
fraternizing among "Yanks" and "Johnny 
Rebs," with mutual exchanges of souvenirs, 
tobacco, and Confederate notes. Individuals 
in the ranks showed no personal hostility 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 145 

to their opponents, as individuals. By the 
end of June, Pemberton was in sight of the 
last of his food, and offered armistice, only 
to meet the same reply that Buckner had 
got at Donelson. On July 4 the whole Con- 
federate force of 30,000 surrendered to Grant 
and were placed upon parole, and the Mis- 
sissippi was free from Confederate control 
from Cairo to the sea.^ In the enthusiasm 
that spread over the North as the meaning 
of the surrender was understood, Lincoln 
wrote to Grant his thanks, described his 
former doubts, and now wished "to make the 
personal acknowledgement that you were 
right and I was wrong." Halleck, aroused 
from his suspicions by the accomplished 
fact, wrote, "You and your army have well 
deserved the gratitude of your country, and 
it will be the boast of your children, that 
their fathers were the heroic army which 
reopened the Mississippi River." "Well 
aware of the vanity of our foe," wrote Pem- 
berton in his report, trying to explain his 
course and its disaster, "I knew that they 
would attach vast importance to the en- 
trance on the 4th of July into the stronghold 
of the great river, and that, to gratify their 
national vanity, they would yield then what 
could not be extorted from them at any other 
time." 

For six months in 1863, while Grant was 

^ The statement is usually made this way, although a minor 
place, Port Hudson, held out five days longer. 



146 THE CIVIL WAR 

fighting along the Mississippi, Rosecrans sat 
in eastern Tennessee, confronting Bragg. 
and doing nothing. Grant prodded him, 
and Halleck did the same, without driving 
him from his conviction that it was a bad 
business to fight two decisive battles at one 
time. He at least understood the importance 
of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, which were 
the keypoints to the Confederate integrity. 
Toward the end of June, with a skill and ease 
that showed it was not incompetence that 
held him back, Rosecrans moved his Army 
of the Cumberland, and speedily locked up 
Bragg in Chattanooga, under siege, and 
occupied Knoxville besides. From August 
20 to September 20 he was engaged in getting 
the enemy out of Chattanooga. 

All the other Union armies were resting 
during Rosecrans' campaign, which termi- 
nated in the two days' battle of Chicka- 
mauga, on September 19 and 20, 1863. 
President Davis realized the full significance 
of the attack, and sent to Bragg a division 
here, and another there, until at the final 
test Bragg could bring to the battle line 
66,000 troops. They represented the whole 
circle of the Confederacy, coming from Rich- 
mond, Charleston, Mobile, and Vicksburg, 
and including among their commanders 
Longstreet, Polk, and Buckner. 

The last of these, Buckner, was a Kentucky 
militiaman, who had risen rapidly to com- 
mand, and had been left by his superiors to 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 147 

bear the burden of the surrender of Fort 
Donelson. In later Hfe, his political activities 
finally placed him on the same ticket with 
one of his Union opponents, John M. Palmer, 
in a presidential campaign. Longs treet had 
come west, at his own request, to re-enforce 
Bragg, after fighting through all the great 
engagements in Virginia. The tempera- 
mental barrier between him and his com- 
mander weakened the value of his aid. Polk 
knew the lower IVIississippi Valley perhaps 
better than any of his colleagues. After 
graduating at West Point, in 1827, he had 
gone into the church, and had been the first 
Episcopal missionary bishop of the South- 
west. No pioneer roughness was too crude 
for him, and when episcopal translation put 
him at the head of the diocese of Louisiana, 
he continued his travel up and down the 
valley, that made his name and figure famil- 
iar to most of its inhabitants. Against his 
preferences he buckled the sword over the 
gown at the request of Davis, kept it there 
under the same request, when he thought 
the assignment of Albert Sidney Johnston 
to the western armies ought to have relieved 
him, and continued to his death in the service 
of the cause of constitutional liberty as he 
saw it. 

By the middle of September, Bragg had 
received and placed his men, preparing to 
offer a general battle. He was on the verge 
of giving the order for attack, when Rose- 



148 THE CIVIL WAR 

crans, with Thomas on his left, along the 
Chickamauga River, began a fight on the 
morning of the 19th. During the first day, 
Rosecrans had what advantage there was, 
as he had had during the whole of the 
manoeuvre thus far. The exigencies of the 
battle arrangement had led both armies 
away from their objective, but as the battle 
came, Rosecrans was between Bragg and 
Chattanooga. On the 20th the fight was 
resumed, to the confusion of the Union 
forces. Rosecrans left the field, and hurried 
into Chattanooga to prepare to receive his 
retreating army; only the stubbornness of 
Thomas saved the day from total destruc- 
tion. He held the road while the other divi- 
sions escaped and Bragg used up his strength 
in repeated but ineffective assaults. By 
September 22, Chattanooga was a Union 
city as the result of an engagement, which is 
generally regarded as a Union defeat. Bragg 
was now the besieger and settled down to 
starve the Army of the Cumberland out of 
its position. The campaign had accomplished 
its purpose, but its last three days had de- 
stroyed the fame of Rosecrans. When Grant 
accepted the command of all the armies of 
the West, a few days later, he took this 
army from its leader, and gave it to Thomas, 
the "rock of Chickamauga." 

The survivors of the Army of the Cumber- 
land maintain that Chickamauga was a 
Union victory in that it gained for Rosecrans 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 149 

his objective. The country thought differ- 
ently, and turned to the one consistent victor 
in the West. Grant had been inspecting 
posts in his command since Vicksburg had 
destroyed the last resistance of the enemy. 
His request for orders to take Mobile had 
been denied. He was sick at New Orleans 
when ordered to re-enforce Rosecrans, and 
was not well when ordered by the secretary 
of war to report at once at Cairo. From 
Cairo he was sent to Louisville, and was 
joined on the way by Secretary Stanton, who 
had come out to offer him command of a new 
military division of the Mississippi, with 
subordinate departments of the Ohio, the 
Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and control 
of nearly all the forces of the West. On 
October 20 Grant started for the centre of 
his command, having telegraphed Thomas 
to hold tight, and received the encouraging 
response, "We will hold the town till we 
starve." Starvation was not far away. The 
Union army was closely watched by Bragg, 
upon the near-by hills; its route to its sup- 
plies at Nashville was cut off by the enemy; 
its horses were dying, and its men were living 
on "half rations of hard bread and heef dried 
on the hoof'' 

On the afternoon of October 23 Grant 
arrived at Chattanooga, "wet, dirty, and 
well;" went at once to Thomas's head- 
quarters; thrust his muddy top boots into 
the warmth of the grate fire; lighted a fresh 



150 THE CIVIL WAR 

cigar; and took command of the invested 
army. Before he went to bed he had issued 
orders for the opening of a "cracker" Hne 
through which food and ammunition might 
come more safely, and when he rode around 
the Hues the following morning it was evident 
to all that the command had changed. Be- 
fore the end of the month the siege was raised, 
Bragg had divided his army by sending Long- 
street to try to get Knoxville, and Grant 
had begun to consolidate his own force for 
the aggressive. Sherman was summoned 
from Vicksburg to Chattanooga. 

With the arrival of Sherman and his army 
corps, there were brought together, for the 
first and only time during the war, four men 
whose names are, perhaps, brightest among 
those who fought for the Union. Grant, 
Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan never lost 
their hold on public confidence, and the 
affectionate regard of the people for them 
continued increasingly until the war was over. 
Other generals had their ups and downs: 
these went always up. Others may have 
been as skilful, and were certainly as brave, 
but none were more successful, and, what is 
still more important as military reputations 
go, none were so consistently lucky. 

Grant had gained the control of the fight- 
ing in the West, and had given Sherman his 
old Army of the Tennessee, while Thomas 
had the Army of the Cumberland. William 
Tecum seh Sherman began his "Memoirs" 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 151 

with an account of his service in the ThircJ 
Artillery at Charleston, under Captain Rob- 
ert Anderson, in 1846. Had he begun them 
with his youth, he would have recorded his 
birth in Ohio, and his graduation at West 
Point in the class of 1840. A younger brother, 
John, who remained at home, was senator 
from Ohio when the Civil War began, while 
William had resigned from the army and 
become superintendent of the state military 
academy of Louisiana. In March, 1861, he 
journeyed up the railway through Jackson, 
Mississippi, to Columbus, Kentucky, along 
which he was to do so much laborious fighting 
the next year, and was in St. Louis, as was 
Grant, when Captain Lyon seized the arsenal 
and saved the state. He had no doubt, from 
the first, about the seriousness of the war, 
and damned the politicians. When Lincoln 
snubbed him at the White House, in spite 
of the prestige of his senatorial brother, he 
lost his temper. "You have got things in a 
hell of a ^x, and you may get out of them as 
best you can," he said to John. After Bull 
Run, in which he participated as colonel 
commanding a brigade, he was sent west, 
where his rise was more rapid than that of 
most of the West Pointers. After Vicksburg, 
he was famous and knew it, but his relations 
to Grant, his chief, remained intimate and 
confidential. Grant's first thought on receiv- 
ing his promotion, was that Sherman should 
succeed him in the Army of the Tennessee. 



152 THE CIVIL WAR 

"The Army of the Confederacy is the South," 
wrote William to John, toward the end of 
1863, "and they still hope to worry us out. 
The moment we relax they gain strength and 
confidence. We must hammer away and 
show such resistance, such bottom that even 
that slender hope will fail them." On October 
27 he received his orders to march from 
Mississippi into eastern Tennessee; on Nov- 
ember 14 he rode into Chattanooga. 

Major-General George H. Thomas, com- 
manding the Army of the Cumberland, 
graduated in Sherman's class at West Point, 
and was one of those Virginians who stayed 
by the Union. His regiment, the Second 
Cavalry, lost by resignation all its officers 
outranking him, including its commander, 
Albert Sidney Johnston, so that he entered 
the war, a colonel through seniority, at the 
age of forty-four. In August, 1861, he was 
detailed for service in Kentucky, where he 
worked his way up in the Army of the Cum- 
berland until at Chickamauga his conduct 
was distinguished the more because of the 
uncertainty of that of Rosecrans. He passed 
on his army corps to John M. Palmer, one 
of the political major-generals from Illinois, 
when he succeeded Rosecrans. DeHberate 
and slow, he was eminently a soldier. Grant 
believed, in later years, that Thomas could 
not have conducted Sherman's aggressive 
campaigns, but that "if it had been given him 
to hold the line which [Joe] Johnston tried to 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 153 

hold, neither that general, nor Sherman, nor 
any other officer could have done it better." 

Among Thomas's subordinate command- 
ers, none outclassed Philip H. Sheridan, an 
Irish-American who as a cavalry leader had 
no superior in the Civil War, and for whom 
the war ended too soon, not giving him a 
chance to prove that he had no superior of 
any sort. Like the others of this group, he 
was a West Pointer, but of a later generation, 
graduating in 1852. Before the battle of 
Perryville, at which Buell checked Bragg's 
invasion of Kentucky, he had risen from 
lieutenant to captain, from captain to colonel, 
and to brigadier-general. After Stone's 
River his distinguished services made him a 
major-general of volunteers, while after 
Grant's campaign at Chattanooga he was 
taken east to command the cavalry division 
of the Army of the Potomac. 

In addition to Sherman, Thomas, and 
Sheridan, there was another commander 
whose arrival at Chattanooga made a mate- 
rial increase to Grant's strength. Joseph 
Hooker, with two army corps, was shifted 
by rail from the army of the Potomac to the 
Tennessee, and arrived early in October with 
no wagon trains, but with an experience 
gained in all ranks of the army of the Poto- 
mac, from brigadier-general to general-in- 
command. The transfer of his corps is one 
of the many cases in which the northern 
railways formed an extra arm of the Union 



154 THE CIVIL WAR 

service. The failure of his superiors to give 
him wagons and animals tied him to Nash- 
ville and deprived Rosecrans of his aid for 
three weeks, while Rosecrans' s resulting in- 
activity convinced those same superiors of 
his incompetence. 

The situation confronting Grant at Chat- 
tanooga required strategy quite as much as 
fighting, for Bragg was so entrenched tfeat 
front attacks could be repelled at pleasure. 
His army lay in a long curve on the moun- 
tains east and south of Chattanooga, with 
his right on Missionary Ridge and his left 
on Lookout Mountain. Around his right 
ran the Chickamauga River, on which Rose- 
crans had fought him in September. Chat- 
tanooga Creek pierced the centre of his line 
and emptied into the Tennessee River a few 
miles below the city. 

Facing Bragg, Grant lined up Sherman on 
his left, Thomas in his centre, and Hooker 
on his right. The bulk of the fighting, as he 
arranged it, was intended to fall on Sherman, 
in whose leadership he had the greatest 
confidence. Sherman was ordered to march 
secretly, to cross the Tennessee, and to fall 
on Bragg's right flank, at the north end of 
Missionary Ridge, while the rest of the army 
was to hold Bragg's left, so that it could not 
re-enforce. The secret movement was a 
success, though delayed by the difficulty of 
moving heavy trains along the wretched 
mountain paths. To conceal Sherman's 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 155 

movement, Thomas, on September 23, drew 
up his division in the centre of the line, in 
readiness to storm the heights before him. 
It was planned that on the following day he 
should make an advance. Sherman, mean- 
while, accomplished his crossing on the 23d, 
and on the morning of the 24th, when he 
ought to have sprung his assault, found 
himself misled by his maps, and separated 
from the enemy by a ravine of whose exist- 
ence he was unaware. The reconnoissance 
of Thomas, by this accident, deviated from 
a demonstration into a battle. Hooker, on 
Thomas's right, with a mixed army of 10,000 
men representing the three armies of the 
Potomac, the Cumberland, and the Mis- 
sissippi, was in front of the heights of Look- 
out Mountain when the fight began on the 
24th. All day he worked his men through 
the fog, up the side of Lookout Mountain, 
until at night Bragg's left was so crumpled 
up and brushed away that Hooker could 
prepare to pursue his retiring regiments on 
the 25th. 

The value of Sherman's manoeuvre is 
still debated by tacticians. He and Grant 
believed that he held Bragg's right, and 
compelled him to strengthen it from the 
centre, thus weakening the Confederate 
ranks on Missionary Ridge, at the middle 
of the line. Yet the Army of the Cumber- 
land, which faced that middle, had reasons 
to believe that it remained unweakened all 



156 THE CIVIL WAR 

through the 24th. On the afternoon of the 
25th, Thomas moved his army, still angry 
over the slights cast upon it after Chieka- 
mauga, against the entrenchments at the 
foot of Missionary Ridge. Above him were 
the heights whose inaccessibility had induced 
Grant to try to outflank the enemy. But 
once the advance was started and the first 
rifle-pits attained, the soldiers of the Army 
of the Cumberland took charge and went on 
up the hill. Their officers went with them, 
but that was all. In an hour they had dis- 
possessed Bragg's centre, captured his guns 
and his forts, to say nothing of prisoners, 
left nearly 4,000 of their own men killed and 
wounded on the hillside, and ended an en- 
gagement as decisive as Vicksburg had been. 
Grant had brought 56,000 men into the 
fight, against 44,000 Confederates. 

Both armies settled down for the winter 
shortly after Chattanooga. Bragg retreated 
into Georgia, where he was soon relieved by 
"Joe" Johnston, whose skill in delaying the 
advance of an army was not surpassed in 
any of his colleagues. He fortified himseK 
at Dalton and waited for attack. The army 
of the Cumberland lay at Chattanooga under 
Thomas. Knoxville was relieved by various 
Union forces, while Longstreet, who threat- 
ened it, went back to the defence of Rich- 
mond. Sherman resumed his minor opera- 
tions in Mississippi, and wintered near 
Huntsville, Alabama. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 157 

When the spring of 1864 opened, Grant 
rose in rank once more, for in the eighteen 
months since Antietam the armies in eastern 
Virginia had continued at their old work of 
attack and defence, with but httle change 
in their relations. One commander after 
another had been tried and discarded before 
Congress, in February, 1864, revived the 
office of lieutenant-general, unused since the 
death of Washington, and in which the Sen- 
ate promptly confirmed the appointment of 
General Grant. A few days later the new 
general-in-chief of all the armies came quietly 
into Washington, stood in line at the desk 
of the Willard House until the important 
clerk had time to read on the register his 
unassuming "U. S. Grant and son, Galena, 
111.," and received his commission from the 
hand of Lincoln. A letter from Sherman 
followed him east with advice that is worth 
recording: "Come out west; take to your- 
self the whole Mississippi Valley; let us 
make it dead sure, and I tell you the Atlantic 
slope and the Pacific shores will follow its 
destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live or 
die with the main trunk! . . . Here lies 
the seat of the coming empire; and from the 
west, when our task is done, we will make 
short work of Charleston and Richmond, and 
the impoverished slope of the Atlantic." 

Until the appointment of Grant, Lincoln 
continued to feel his responsibility as con- 
stitutional commander-in-chief, and tried to 



158 THE CIVIL WAR 

supplement the efforts of his eastern gen- 
erals. He had even called for books on 
the art of war, and studied them in the min- 
utes between his political engagements. He 
brought to the task common sense beyond 
the average, but his biographers generally 
admit that he was not at his best as a mili- 
tary adviser. His disposition and attitude, 
however, were exactly what ought to be 
aimed at by the political leader charged with 
the conduct of a war. Repeatedly he chose 
generals, placed full confidence in them, saw 
them fail, and felt forced to intervene with 
his amateur strategy. During the events of 
1862 he had suffered from the absence of the 
commander of the Army of the Potomac in 
the field, and had summoned Halleck, — 
the most successful man he could see, — to 
reside in Washington and explain or advise 
as the case might need. He did not want 
ever to intervene, but knew that his was the 
responsibility for the safety of the Union. 
When McClellan rode his command with 
too high a hand, Lincoln only said, over- 
looking ostentatious personal slights, "I 
will hold McClellan's horse, if he will only 
bring us success." When he learned that 
Hooker had foolishly said that the country 
needed a dictator, he contented himself with 
replying: "Only those generals who gain 
successes can set up dictators. WTiat I now 
ask of you is military success, and I will 
risk the dictatorship." When Grant pre- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 159 

pared his orders for his first general campaign 
in 1864, the President wrote him, "The 
particulars of your plan I neither know, nor 
seek to know." For once Lincoln found no 
complaint coming from headquarters; Grant 
replied, "Should my success be less than 
I desire and expect, the least I can say is, 
the fault is not with you." 



CHAPTER IX 

GETTYSBURG AND RECONSTRUCTION 

The three successors of McClellan made 
slight progress with the attack upon Rich- 
mond between the battle of Antietam and 
the arrival of Grant in Washington. Burn- 
side, Hooker, and Meade fought three of 
the bloodiest battles of the war; at Fred- 
ericksburg the Union loss was nearly 11,000; 
at Chancellorsville it was over 11,000; at 
Gettysburg it was 17,684. The Confeder- 
ate loss to offset these in the three engage- 
ments was 38,000. When they were all over, 
the Union armies lay entrenched near the 
Potomac, while Lee continued to block the 
road to Richmond. 

At most times throughout the war General 
Robert E. Lee was held by President Davis 
to that defensive fighting that he thought 
most wise. The invasion of Maryland had 
been, in many ways, only a piece of aggressive 
defence, in order to compel the Union leaders 
to let up on Richmond. After the battle of 
Antietam, Lee fell back into Virginia and 
waited through the autumn of 1862, to see 
what McClellan would do next. When Mc- 

160 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 161 

Clellan was replaced by Ambrose E. Burn- 
side, on November 7, Lee had to take up 
anew his series of studies of the personality 
and tactics of Union commanders. Long- 
street is responsible for the assertion that 
Lee regretted to part with McClellan, "for 
we always understood each other so well. I 
fear they may continue to make these changes 
till they find some one whom I don't under- 
stand." Greater confidence permeated the 
Confederate ranks after the successes of the 
year, and large numbers of absentees came 
back into the army. When they saw that 
McClellan's removal was due to his unwilling- 
ness to fight, they knew that his successor 
would try to fight before winter set in. 

The strategy of Burnside's campaign was 
simple and almost predetermined. Of the 
three ways of getting to Richmond, McClel- 
lan had tried two. In the spring he had 
gone to the Peninsula; while in the fall he 
was at work on the route along the foothills of 
the Blue Ridge, — the Piedmont, — when dis- 
missed. Neither of his plans could be taken 
up again without somewhat discrediting the 
authorities who removed him. Accordingly, 
Burnside proceeded on the middle route, 
moving at once on Fredericksburg, and hop- 
ing to skirt Lee's right flank and get be- 
tween him and Richmond. The Richmond 
and Potomac railway was relied on as a car- 
rier of Union supplies. On November 17, 
the advance of the Union army reached the 



162 THE CIVIL WAR 

Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericks- 
burg, and could, and would have occupied 
the town at once, had not Burnside held 
back for a pontoon train and a heavier force. 
It was Lee's first desire to let Burnside cross 
the Rappahannock and get further into the 
Wilderness, and then destroy him in a pitched 
battle; but Davis intervened. In October, 
Gladstone had let out a note of British 
sympathy for the Confederacy, which made 
the Richmond leaders hope that a recogni- 
tion by Great Britain might follow and make 
the danger of a great battle unnecessary. 
Before Burnside got his army ready to cross 
the river, Lee was waiting for him along the 
top of the heights behind the city, with a 
line more than six miles long, Longstreet on 
the left and "Stonewall" Jackson on the 
right. 

On December 13, 1862, Burnside began 
his attack. Lee had allowed him to build 
his bridges and cross the Rappahannock 
without serious interference. Entrenched 
along the ridges, he was content to wait and 
fight under cover, since his weaker force of 
72,000 was to oppose 106,000 Union effec- 
tives. Nowhere along the line was the 
attack of December 13 successful. Toward 
the close of the day, as a last chance, Burn- 
side sent column after column up the hill, 
along the Orange Plank Road, against a 
stone wall at the foot of a rising known as 
Marye's Hill. One army corps lost more 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 163 

than a quarter of its men in the vain assault. 
Hooker's division, at the last, kept up the 
fight long after its failure was plain to every- 
one but Burnside. On December 14, the 
army lay, winded, around Fredericksburg. 
The next day it crossed the Rappahannock 
again and returned to quarters. The snap 
was gone from the Army of the Potomac, 
and when "Fighting Joe'' Hooker took the 
reins from Burnside his rolls showed that 
84,000 men v/ho ought to have been present 
had quietly melted from the ranks. Neither 
this army nor Lee's was made up of pro- 
fessional soldiers yet. The morale of either 
broke down in the face of defeat. Even the 
victorious Confederate army dwindled in 
numbers, and Lee had to make repeated 
demands for re-enforcements. Wiser than 
many of the other Confederate leaders, he 
saw the logical outcome, unless some acci- 
dent should intervene. "We should not," 
he wrote in the spring of 1863, "conceal from 
ourselves that our resources in men are con- 
stantly diminishing, and the disproportion 
in this respect between us and our ene- 
mies ... is constantly augmenting." 

The Army of the Potomac wintered after 
Fredericksburg in its old quarters around 
Falmouth, on the narrowest neck of land 
between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, 
about fifty miles from Washington. Under 
Hooker, the spirits of the men revived more 
than those of its officers, for the latter, though 



164 THE CIVIL WAR 

knowing him as a brave fighter, distrusted 
his judgment and his personal character. 
By April, 1863, when the President came 
down to camp to review the troops, in a heavy 
snowstorm, there were 130,000 effectives 
present, organized in seven army corps. On 
April 12, Hooker began to shoe his horses 
and clean up his hospitals. In a few days 
more he was marching up the Rappahannock 
to a crossing above Fredericksburg, near 
Chancellorsville, where on the last day of 
the month he established his headquarters 
at the Chancellor House. Part of his force 
he had thrown across the river below Fred- 
ericksburg, so that Lee lay between his 
divided left and right wings. The Confed- 
erates were in their old entrenchments of 
December, and began to readjust their lines 
only on the morning of May 1. There were 
perhaps 60,000 of them. Longstreet had 
been detached from the army for service 
elsewhere, leaving Jackson and Lee to direct 
the fighting. By the night of the 1st, these 
had established a new line, touching the 
Union outposts, and here the soldiers bivou- 
acked where they happened to be. Lee and 
Jackson slept together on a heap of pine 
boughs. The next morning the latter set off 
with his army for a destination unannounced, 
which proved, in the afternoon, to be 
Hooker's right flank, which he reached by 
an inconspicuous farm road. In the early 
evening his men plunged upon the surprised 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 165 

wing, with the "rebel yell." The victory 
which they gained cost a high price, for 
Jackson rode into his own line of fire and was 
torn to pieces by Confederate bullets. 

Many of Hooker's generals believed that 
the battle could have been saved on May 3. 
The division of the Union army for attack 
had given Lee a great advantage; but he 
had divided his own force for defence, and 
Hooker had abundant fresh troops on the 
3d, who might have destroyed Jackson's 
flanking party on his right. He abandoned 
his right, however, and tried to take the 
heights of Fredericksburg, on his left, al- 
though they had proved impregnable in 
Burnside's fight. An assault on them was 
finally successful, but before the wing which 
took them was in full possession. Hooker 
had been stunned by a cannon ball and had 
left the field. His orders that the army be 
withdrawn terminated the aggressive cam- 
paign. A good opportunity had been lost 
by mismanagement, and the superior general- 
ship of Lee. 

The government was in a quandary when 
the news of Lee's victory reached Washing- 
ton. It was obvious that Hooker could not 
be allowed to blunder away another battle, 
yet it was hard to agree on any one to take 
his place. Nearly every general of the Army 
of the Potomac who had distinguished him- 
self had been tried in chief command. The 
embarrassment was increased by the knowl- 



166 THE CIVIL WAR 

edge that many of Hooker's subordinates, 
including Couch, who had taken charge on 
the 3d, would resign if he were not removed. 
Before a decision could be reached Lee added 
to the perplexity by breaking camp, and 
Hooker surmised that he was heading for 
the Potomac. The surmise was correct, 
for Lee had slipped once more into the 
Shenandoah Valley, with an invasion of 
Maryland and Pennsylvania in his mind. 

Hooker suggested that he ought to "pitch 
into his rear," at Fredericksburg, again. 
But Lincoln, cautious after two experiences 
with the hills of Fredericksburg, advised 
him to stay north of the Rappahannock, 
saying, "I would not take any risk of 
being entangled upon the river, like an ox 
jumped half over a fence, and liable to be 
torn by dogs, front and rear without a fair 
chance to gore one way or kick the other." 

General George G. Meade, commanding 
the fifth corps of Hooker's army, was asleep 
in his tent near Frederick, Maryland, when 
he was aroused by the chief of staff of the 
secretary of war and, instead of being taken 
to Washington, under arrest, as he had 
sleepily anticipated, was led, protesting, to 
Hooker's tent, under peremptory orders to as- 
sume command of the Army of the Potomac. 
Caution, quick temper, and irritability are 
the qualities in Meade which made the great- 
est impression on his associates. He did not 
belong to the "gallant soldier" class, was 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 167 

not a politician, and had no capacity to 
humor the whims of the pubKc. He was, 
however, a brilliant engineer and an unusual 
tactician, who stood better with his superiors 
than with his subordinates. Unlike most of 
the generals he came of an old and well- 
known family, and had a standing on the 
floor of the Philadelphia ^'Assembly Balls" 
as secure as in the camp. It was on June 
28, with an army sprinkled over two states, 
that he took command. 

There was great risk in changing leaders 
on the eve of a general engagement. Meade 
had not been in the confidence of Hooker, 
whom he had preceded by two years at West 
Point, and had no accurate knowledge of 
the location of the various corps that had 
moved north on the inner circle, as Lee moved 
on the outer. Hooker had been following 
Lee, and on June 28, Meade, after taking 
account of stock, ordered the armies to con- 
tinue their march to the Susquehanna and 
to keep Washington, Baltimore, and Phil- 
adelphia well covered. 

There was commotion in the eastern cities 
of the North. New York and Philadelphia 
called for McClellan once more, while their 
governors enlarged the home guard and 
took measures for defence that were novel 
north of the Potomac. "Business stopped," 
says Rhodes, and it was said "that bankers 
and merchants were making preparations 
to remove specie and other valuables" from 



168 THE CIVIL WAR 

Philadelphia. But with all the alarm, stocks 
stayed where they were, and there was no 
financial panic. Even the shares of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad, whose line was likely to 
be torn to pieces by one army or the other, 
fell less than two points in the open market. 

On June 28, 1863, Longstreet was already 
in Pennsylvania, near Chambersburg, while 
the southern army, stretched behind him, 
was beginning to consider concentration. 
Lee had no notion of staying in the North, — 
if he broke up the attacks on Richmond he 
would do enough. But by June 29, he had 
got so far that he must either fight a battle 
or fall back. He did not fear the outcome, 
for his army had grown steadily since Chan- 
cellorsville, and was now a trained and tem- 
pered machine, full of confidence acquired 
in two great victories. The numbers were 
not far apart. Meade had 88,000 men; 
Lee, 76,000. 

Meade suspected that Lee had reached his 
farthest north, and seized a convenient cross- 
roads, where he might easily intercept the 
return, by whatever route. Gettysburg, in 
southern Pennsylvania, is the meeting place 
of several important roads leading from York, 
Harrisburg, Carlisle, and Chambersburg, 
on the north, and back to Maryland, on 
the south. Lee was north of the town when 
Meade's advance pushed into and through it, 
on July 1. A httle further on, the Union men 
met the head of the enemy, marching south. 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 169 

and were driven back upon the rear of their 
column, after a long day's fight. The death 
of Reynolds, their commander, early in the 
day, might have accounted for greater demor- 
alization than occurred. Meade had a sub- 
stitute ready at once, and Hancock was on 
the field by the middle of the afternoon, to 
straighten out the regiments in the cemetery 
south of Gettysburg. That night both Lee 
and Meade realized that the battle was 
before them, and prepared for it. The former 
was somewhat weakened in his judgment 
because of the contempt he had begun to 
acquire for the Army of the Potomac. As 
the ground lay, he was forced to take the 
offensive. 

During the forenoon of July 2, Lee's 
skirmishers explored the long Union line, as 
it lay on the ridge of Cemetery Hill. They 
found it to be in the form of an inverted 
capital U, with the bend pointing north. It 
followed the natural contour of the field, 
being nearly everywhere on a hillside. At 
the extreme right, on the east. Gulp's Hill 
formed a natural termination of the line; 
another hill. Round Top, performed a similar 
function on the left. It was about two miles 
from the cemetery to the end of the left; 
the right extremity was three-quarters of a 
mile nearer; while it was possible to com- 
municate with all portions of the line from 
the rear, which lay in the centre of the U. 
The only portion which was net well pro- 



170 THE CIVIL WAR 

tected, was toward the left, where Sickles 
had advanced beyond his station and rested 
in the open fields. This, Longstreet at- 
tacked, pushing Sickles back to where he 
ought to have been, but no further. Every- 
where along the front the attack became 
general as the day wore on, and at the right. 
Gulp's Hill was seized and held over night. 

On the morning of July 3, Lee thought to 
end a battle and record a victory. Instead, 
he found Gulp's Hill taken from him, and 
learned that Longstreet's supposed victory 
over Sickles had only rectified, not weakened, 
Meade's position. The Union commander, 
less than a week in office, was waiting calmly 
for the next attack. A young Wisconsin offi- 
cer has described his appearance: "There 
was no arrogance of hope, or timidity of 
fear discernible in his face; but you would 
have supposed that he would do his duty 
conscientiously and well, and would be willing 
to abide the result." The same officer heard 
Meade talk with Hancock and others during 
the morning, and learned that he was pleased 
with the left, and satisfied with the right, 
and "was not of the opinion that the enemy 
would attack the centre, our artillery had 
such sweep there." 

The forenoon of the third day of Gettys- 
burg passed with nothing more than skirmish- 
ing along the front. The general position 
of Lee was well known, but his intentions 
had been revealed to his own generals only 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 171 

after the reoccupation of Gulp's Hill. He 
lay concealed in the timber of a row of hills 
generally concentric to, and outside of, Ceme- 
tery Hill, and known as Seminary Ridge. 
Between the two lines, along the Union left, 
was nearly a mile of fields and orchards, with 
the Emmitsburg Road running down the 
middle. He had failed to make a gain at 
either flank, and now proposed to use fresh 
troops against the thinnest part of Meade's 
line, where Meade did not expect him. The 
light camp lunch was consumed, the cigars 
had been smoked, and the generals who had 
eaten with Meade had started back to their 
posts when Lee commenced a terrific bom- 
bardment of Meade's position. After more 
than an hour of this, the fire slackened and 
rumor ran through the Union ranks that the 
enemy was advancing. Out of the woods, 
in front half a mile long, column after column 
moved slowly into position, as if on parade. 
Eighteen thousand men, chiefly Pickett's 
division, marched across the open fields 
against the centre of the Union line. The 
shrapnel and cannister rained upon them, 
but only made the files close up to fill their 
gaps. Without haste, and without a quiver, 
the finest charge of the Civil War was made. 
In cold-blooded, deliberate courage it sur- 
passed the assault of Missionary Ridge. 
The front of the column crossed the whole 
interval between the armies, and fought, 
hand to hand, with the regiments of the 



172 THE CIVIL WAR 

wavering Union line. But the line held, 
miscellaneous regiments were led by strange 
officers to the rescue, and in a few minutes 
those of Pickett's column who remained 
alive began their retreat. The three days' 
fighting had cost Lee 22,000 men; it cost the 
victor nearly 18,000.i 

Like the battle of Antietam, Gettysburg 
was followed by a period of inaction. Lee 
slowly withdrew, and Meade slowly followed 
him, never gaining the credit which military 
critics believe he might have had of destroy- 
ing his adversary. Both armies crossed the 
Potomac, Meade keeping to the Piedmont, 
east of the Shenandoah Valley, where Mc- 
Clellan had been in the fall of 1862. When 
winter came, their positions were not far 
different from what they had been a year 
before. 

The victory of Gettysburg preceded the 
fall of Vicksburg by one day. On July 5, 
the whole United States knew that the 
Mississippi was opened, and that the irre- 
sistible Lee had been defeated. Neither 
triumph had had its equal in the war, and 
the combination led the sanguine to hope 
that the end was near. In any foreign war 
either would probably have been decisive, 
but this was not a war to be won by points. 
The determination of the Union to main- 
tain itself was equalled by the determination 

* Here, as elsewhere, the figures include the dead and 
wounded, but not the captured. 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 173 

of the Confederacy to secure its independence. 
Until the last army in the field was gone, 
until the last dollar had been borrowed and 
spent, and the last old man lined up beside 
the last small boy in the Confederate ranks, 
the war was not to end. If Davis and his 
advisers had the intellectual acumen, or 
honesty, to see the end, and failed to ask 
for terms at this time, the moral responsibility 
that they assumed was great. Their people, 
generally misled by their own press, had 
little notion of the catastrophe. 

Gettysburg was a severe defeat, but Lee 
was not overwhelmed by it. He retired in 
good order, showing such strength that 
Meade would not provoke him to another 
test. He resumed his guard of Richmond, 
and all through the next year kept it so vigi- 
lantly that the greatest of Union leaders, with 
unlimited resources, could not break it down. 

Vicksburg, on the other hand, was a victory 
that cleared the ground. It ended the strug- 
gle for the Mississippi, and restricted the 
working area of the Confederacy to the 
seaboard and the lower South. In no way 
do the relative results of the fighting appear 
more clear than in connection with the civil 
measures resorted to by Lincoln in the 
West and in the East. By the end of 1863, 
large portions of Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
Louisiana were actually within the Union 
lines, and contained no trace of organized 
resistance. In the East, the lines were where 



174 THE CIVIL WAR 

they had been in 1861, except for the moun- 
tain region of Virginia. 

A counter-revolution in Virginia, in 1861, 
partially undid the work of secession. In 
the convention which determined to secede, 
the vote was eighty-eight to fifty-five, the 
minority representing the western counties, 
where the number of slaves, always small, 
had actually diminished since 1850. Inter- 
course between the sections had been slight. 
From the West came always a few members 
of the legislature, and a few inmates of the 
penitentiary, it is said, but there was little 
else. Among these mountain Virginians, 
the ordinance of secession was repudiated 
at once, and an irregular state government 
was erected at Wheeling, that declared all 
the existing state offices vacated by the act 
of treason, chose new officers, and called 
upon Lincoln to recognize it as the actual 
government of Virginia. Francis H. Pierpont 
was chosen governor on June 20, 1861. 

It was the belief of Lincoln that no state 
could get out of the Union. The seceding 
governments he described as illegal con- 
spiracies, and he was quite willing to recog- 
nize as the legal government, this provisional 
administration erected by the loyal citizens 
of the state. Congress agreed with him, 
admitting senators and representatives elected 
to take the places of those Virginians who 
had resigned. One of the senators from Ten- 
nessee, Andrew Johnson, a Union Democrat, 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 175 

led in the advocacy of the right of these men 
to their seats. 

After they had been recognized by Con- 
gress as the state of Virginia, the western 
Virginians soon presented a popular memorial, 
approved by their legislature, asking for the 
division of the state and the creation of a 
new state in the West. "No new State shall 
be formed . . . within the Jurisdiction of 
any other State . . . without the Consent" 
of the legislature of the state concerned, says 
the Constitution. This consent was here 
obtained without difficulty since the eastern 
population, which would have opposed it, 
had refused to co-operate with the loyal 
government, and had thus thrown away its 
voice. On the last day of 1862, Lincoln 
signed a bill admitting West Virginia into 
the Union. 

The debates over West Virginia gave rise 
to constitutional discussion of the nature 
of secession, that gained greater interest as 
the war went on. To the casual observer, 
the state of Virginia in the Confederacy ap- 
peared to have all of the attributes of the 
old state in the Union, to be that state in 
fact, as it claimed to be. If this were true, 
the Pierpont government was without legal 
basis, and could not give constitutional 
assent to the partition of the state. But, in 
this case, it would have also to be admitted 
that Virginia, constitutionally or not, had 
in fact got out of the Union and maintained 



176 THE CIVIL WAR 

an existence outside of the Constitution. 
Any act of the United States that admitted 
that the Confederate state of Virginia was 
Virginia, must be an admission that secession 
was a fact. 

Lincoln denied the logical and physical 
possibility of secession. Maintaining the in- 
destructibility of the Union, he was forced 
to hold that Virginia was still in the Union, 
though prevented from performing her duties 
by an illegal conspiracy of her citizens. This 
conspiracy, which obstructed the laws, was 
to be broken down by the President, under 
his constitutional obligation to enforce the 
law. He was ready to use his discretion in 
recognizing as Virginia any loyal government 
that appeared to have no opposition among 
loyal citizens. This was highly expedient, 
and he believed it to be entirely constitu- 
tional. His cabinet was evenly divided on 
the question, however, and in Congress there 
was wide range of opinion. Some admitted 
that secession had broken the Union; others, 
like Sumner, held secession to have consti- 
tuted an act of suicide, ending the existence 
of the state, and reducing it to the condi- 
tion of other unorganized territory of the 
United States. Thaddeus Stevens, of Penn- 
sylvania, went even further, held that 
secession was annihilation, that the status 
during the war was of no consequence, that 
if the South should be won back by force it 
must be considered as a conquered province, 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 177 

subject in all things to the will of the con- 
queror. In this confusion, Lincoln held 
tight to his guiding doctrine of the perma- 
nence of the Union, recognized the Pierpont 
government as legal, and signed the West 
Virginia bill. 

The Pierpont government became a quaint 
curiosity after the admission of West Vir- 
ginia, in which alone it had any supporters. 
The Virginia which it claimed, in its reduced 
degree, to represent, was in Lee's possession, 
and was content to be there. For a time, 
Pierpont and his state officials, remained on 
what fragment of Virginia soil they could 
find within Union lines; but ultimately 
the government was disregarded and aban- 
doned, as representing no political fact. The 
only portion of the Confederacy, east of the 
Appalachians, won and held by Lincoln at 
the end of 1863, was the mountain country 
now admitted as the state of West Virginia. 

The progress of the war in the West 
raised problems similar to those in Virginia, 
on a larger scale. As soon as the Union armies 
had gained a foothold in Tennessee, after 
the surrender of Fort Donelson and the oc- 
cupation of Nashville, Lincoln appointed a 
war governor to administer the civil interests 
of those Tennessee citizens within the Union 
lines. East Tennessee, with Knoxville as 
its metropolis, was as loyal as West Vir- 
ginia, and might have acted similarly had it 
been nearer to the Ohio River. On March 



178 THE CIVIL WAR 

5, 1862, the Senate confirmed the appoint- 
ment of Andrew Johnson, as miHtary gov- 
ernor, — an office that had no previous 
existence, no precedents, and no legal limits 
for its guidance. Johnson, its incumbent, 
was better qualified to hold it by his aggres- 
sive loyalty than by his temper or discretion. 
The personality of Andrew Johnson, which 
became of critical importance in 1865, was 
shown in 1861, when he refused to be bound 
by the secession of Tennessee, and retained 
his seat in the United States Senate. Clamor 
at home, threats, and epithets failed to move 
him. "I intend to stand by that flag," was 
his resolute utterance. Stubborn honest 
loyalty was the keynote of his character. 
In thirty-five years of public life before the 
war, he had proved in his person that Amer- 
ica was the land of opportunity. Born in 
poverty and ignorance, which his widowed 
mother could not lighten, he was one of the 
humble class of "poor whites" so common 
in the South. He began life as a tailor in 
Tennessee. His wife taught him to write, 
and experience taught him the deep gulf 
between the southern aristocrat and the 
commoner. Before he was thirty he had 
been mayor of his village and member of 
the legislature. He served five terms in 
Congress before he became governor of 
Tennessee, in 1853; and after two adminis- 
trations at the head of his commonwealth 
he became its senator. His career is one of 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 179 

the evidences that the power of the planta- 
tion class was waning even before secession. 
His prominence, loyalty, courage, and popu- 
larity among Tennessee Unionists, justified 
his appointment to a difficult and undefined 
office. 

The functions of the military governor of 
Tennessee were to silence treason, restrain 
the press, maintain the peace, administer 
justice, and feed the destitute. All these 
Johnson did with an ability that made him 
a conspicuous figure throughout the United 
States. He was to keep things going, in 
accordance with Lincoln's theory that Ten- 
nessee remained a state, with all the rights 
that it was practicable to accord her. Late 
in 1862, by order of the President, he tried 
to hold an election for congressmen, but 
found that conditions were too much dis- 
turbed for it. Indeed, for six months more, 
eastern Tennessee was in confusion. In 
July, 1863, there were forty counties repre- 
sented in a Union convention at Nashville, 
and Lincoln began to hope for a new conven- 
tion to undo the work of secession. In 
September, he wrote to Johnson: "All Ten- 
nessee is now clear of armed insurrectionists. 
You need not to be reminded that it is the 
nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal 
State government." Chickamauga and Chat- 
tanooga had both to be fought before actual 
conditions justified the President's state- 
ment, but by December, Tennessee was 



180 THE CIVIL WAR 

free and ready for reconstruction. "Ten- 
nessee is not out of the Union, never has 
been, and never will be out," thundered the 
governor as he encouraged his loyal followers. 
"Treason must be made odious, traitors 
must be punished and impoverished," he 
declared on another occasion. Personally 
rancorous toward the members of that 
aristocracy from which he was excluded, 
Johnson's spirit was far different from that 
of Lincoln. 

While Johnson was following up the vic- 
torious Union army as it occupied Tennessee, 
another war governor was established in 
Louisiana, with headquarters at New Or- 
leans. The occupation of New Orleans in 
the spring of 1862, brought with it problems 
of government in Louisiana that could not 
be evaded. Loyal citizens were fewer than 
in Tennessee, but people and city could not 
be left outside the law. George F. Shepley, 
who was appointed governor in August, 
1862, had been military mayor of New Or- 
leans, by order of General Butler. Courts 
were soon established, and early in 1863, 
an election of congressmen was held in two 
districts, — the only two within the Union 
lines. A military governor for Arkansas, 
John S. Phelps, was appointed a few weeks 
after Shepley, but until after Vicksburg, and 
the taking of Little Rock in September, 1863, 
the Union forces had too little foothold in 
that state to do effective work. 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 181 

Congress was changing its views regarding 
slavery in 1862, but it continued to give its 
countenance to Lincoln's steps in reorganiz- 
ing the Confederate states as rapidly as they 
were occupied. It had admitted senators 
and representatives from Virginia, for the 
term expiring March 4, 1863. It now ad- 
mitted the two representatives chosen in 
Louisiana, seating them for the remainder of 
the same session. Tennessee v/as prevented 
by the Confederate raiders from taking part 
in these early elections, although in fact she 
was more completely Unionized than either 
Louisiana or Virginia. This compliance of 
Congress, and the military successes at 
Gettysburg and Vicksburg, led the President 
to take another step toward reconstruction. 

By December, 1863, at least three states 
were ripe for reorganization, Louisiana, 
Arkansas, and Tennessee. In these the 
President had fulfilled his constitutional 
obligation to see that the laws be faithfully 
executed, and had restored a fair degree of 
peace. He believed that his was the right to 
determine the end of resistance, as he had 
the beginning, as well as to pardon offend- 
ers against the laws. On December 8, 
1863, he issued a proclamation which was 
the result of his interpretation of these 
powers. All persons who had been impli- 
cated in the insurrection, with certain ex- 
ceptions, were authorized to take an oath of 
allegiance to the United States, and receive 



182 THE CIVIL WAR 

full pardon. The excepted classes embraced 
those holding important civil, military, or 
diplomatic offices in "the so-called Confed- 
erate government," those who had resigned 
similar offices in the United States to aid 
the Confederacy, and those who had mal- 
treated prisoners of war. The rank and file, 
whom Lincoln believed to have been deceived 
by their leaders, were to have only a formal 
obstacle placed in their return. When in 
any state a number, equal to one-tenth of 
the vote cast for President in 1860, had taken 
the oath, a government was to be erected by 
the loyal citizens, which Lincoln pledged 
himself to recognize as legal. He could not 
guarantee that its senators and representa- 
tives would get into Congress, since each 
house is the exclusive judge of the admission 
of its members, but so far as the Executive 
could determine the fact, the restoration 
would be complete. 

The reception of this proclamation by 
Congress was such as to encourage the Pres- 
ident. "It is rare," wrote his secretaries, 
Nicolay and Hay, "that so important a 
state paper has been received with such 
unanimous tokens of enthusiastic adhesion." 
The last Congress had admitted represen- 
tatives from the restored states, and, said 
the secretaries, the new Congress raised no 
voice of discord. "Men acted as though the 
millenium had come. Chandler was de- 
lighted, Sumner was joyous, apparently 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 183 

forgetting for the moment his doctrine of 
State suicide; while at the other poHtical 
pole Dixon and Reverdy Johnson said the 
message was highly satisfactory. . . . The con- 
servatives and radicals vied with each other 
in claiming that the message represented 
their own views of the crisis. . . . For a moment 
the most prejudiced Democrats found little 
to say against the message; they called it 
'very ingenious and cunning, admirably 
calculated to deceive. ' " 

The progress of the war had made it pos- 
sible for Lincoln to begin the reconstruc- 
tion of three of the states of the Mississippi 
Valley, upon which Vicksburg had set its 
seal. Gettysburg had released nothing; 
West Virginia had dropped away from the 
Confederacy of its own weight. The defen- 
sive strategy of Lee had held the Confederate 
line through both battles of Bull Run, the 
Peninsula campaign, Antietam, Fredericks- 
burg, Chancellorsville, and even Gettysburg. 
Meade was no nearer to Richmond than 
McClellan had been. 

The crisis of the war, however, was passed, 
and no days in the future were to be so dark 
as those that had gone. Men who had it 
in them to become Unionists, had become so. 
For these, Lincoln took advantage of events 
to phrase a paragraph that summed up all 
the aspirations of the nation. On September 
19, he attended the dedication of a cemetery 
at Gettysburg, and listened to the ripe 



184 THE CIVIL WAR 

oration of Edward Everett. When the latter 
finished his peroration, "the echoes of which 
were lost in the long and hearty plaudits 
of the great multitude," the President of the 
United States spoke a few sentences that 
embraced the whole history of the Union, 
and constitute the most distinctive American 
utterance of the nineteenth century: 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent a new nation, 
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the 
proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation 
so conceived and so dedicated, can long 
endure. We are met on a great battlefield 
of that war. We have come to dedicate a 
portion of that field, as a final resting-place 
for those who here gave their lives that that 
nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
and proper that we should do this. But, in 
a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can- 
not consecrate — we cannot hallow — this 
ground. The brave men, living and dead, 
who struggled here, have consecrated it, far 
above our poor power to add or detract. 
The world will little note, nor long remember, 
what we say here, but it can never forget what 
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, 
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work 
which they who fought here have thus far 
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to 
be here dedicated to the great task remaining 



GETTYSBURG — RECONSTRUCTION 185 

before us — that from these honored dead 
we take increased devotion to that cause for 
which they gave the last full measure of 
devotion — that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain — 
that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
birth of freedom — and that government of 
the people, by the people, for the people, shall 
not perish from the earth." 



CHAPTER X 

THE BALANCE OF POWER 

A CAUSTIC pen, in the hand of Owen Wister, 
in his httle Hfe of Grant, has described the 
change of feeHng that was hastened in Eng- 
land when the news of Gettysburg and Vicks- 
burg was heard. "The London Times and 
Saturday Review,"" he says, "had lately been 
quoting the Bible as sanction for slavery; 
for England dearly loves the Bible; but now 
many voices in London became sure that 
slavery was wicked; for England dearly 
loves success." The crisis in foreign relations 
was passed as soon as the outcome of the war 
was clear. Recognition is to be justified only 
by the success of the people fighting for 
their independence; it is out of question 
in a struggle doomed to failure. But any 
account of English opinion, which relates 
only the motives of expediency that inspired 
the British cabinet, falls far short of the fact, 
and ignores a disinterested, unselfish popular 
movement that has few parallels in history. 
The balance of power between the Union and 
the South was indeed carefully watched, 
but after 1862 the English middle class 

186 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 187 

became convinced that one of the two sides 
was right. 

The fullest and most judicious account of 
the trend of English opinion, after the escape 
of the Alabama in 1862, is to be found in 
the pages of Mr. James Ford Rhodes, who 
shows that direct sympathy with the South 
was confined largely to members of one 
aristocracy, feeling for those of another. 
Sympathy was re-enforced by dislike of the 
United States, on its own account, — a con- 
sciousness of its stubbornness that was incon- 
veniencing the rest of the world, and that 
could be summed up in the words: "The 
war can only end in one way. Why not 
accept the facts and let the South begone.^^" 
The English radicals, who were with the 
United States at all times, were in opposition 
to Lord Palmerston's government, and made 
him less willing to see good in the northern 
cause. After the second Bull Run, Russell 
and Palmerston agreed that the time had 
nearly come to offer mediation; but Antietam 
postponed the day, while the emancipation 
proclamation started a new and positive 
current of feeling among the middle and lower 
classes. 

The London Times denounced the emanci- 
pation proclamation as an attempt to incite 
a servile war, but anti-slavery sentiment ac- 
cepted it as something different, greeting 
"the dawn of the new year [1863] as the 
beginning of an epoch of universal freedom 



188 THE CIVIL WAR 

upon the Western continent, and of close 
friendship between the people of England 
and America." Workmen began to appre- 
ciate its significance. Laborers of Man- 
chester and Sheffield, some of them idle and 
hungry from the closing down of the cotton 
mills, resolved against the "wicked object" 
of the Confederacy. John Bright, always a 
liberal, summed it up in a speech to the 
London trades unions: "Impartial history 
will tell that, when your statesmen were 
hostile or coldly indifferent, when many of 
your rich men were corrupt, when your press 
— which ought to have instructed and de- 
fended — was mainly written to betray, the 
fate of a continent and its vast population 
being in peril, you clung to freedom with an 
unfaltering trust that God in His infinite 
mercy will make it the heritage of all His 
children." 

The American minister in London recog- 
nized that the current of opinion had set in 
favor of the Union, early in 1863; but it 
remained to be seen whether it would be 
stronger than official distrust. In the spring. 
Parliament debated the American situa- 
tion, using the Alabama correspondence as 
a text. Friends of America attacked the 
government from the opposition benches, 
bringing out explanations from the prime 
minister and the solicitor-general. Palmer- 
ston sneered at the claims of the United 
States, denounced them as a means of 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 189 

creating political capital, and assured Par- 
liament that England had enforced her 
neutral obligations. As Adams wrote in his 
diary, he indulged "as usual, in derogatory 
and insulting language rather than in 
conciliation." 

Friends of the North, says Mr. Rhodes, 
believed that this debate presaged war, and 
the Confederate envoys, unrecognized though 
they were, took comfort. Since the departure 
of the Alabama the vessels for their navy 
had been hurried on. One of them, the 
Alexandra, was seized by Russell in April; 
but two others, iron-clad rams, continued 
under construction in the yard of the Lairds. 
When Adams called these to the attention of 
the foreign office, Lord Russell found that 
while, by common knowledge, they were 
for the Confederacy, the contracts showed 
them to belong to a French firm, and to be 
building for the service of a peaceful country. 
Yet Adams continued to bring in testimony 
as to their real intent. On September 1, 
1863, the foreign secretary wrote him that 
there was no evidence on which his govern- 
ment could interfere. Four days later, the 
American minister, fearing the worst, and 
mindful of the debates of March, wrote his 
final note of protest, in which he used words 
that have become historic: "It would be 
superfluous in me to point out to your lord- 
ship that this is war." 

It was a fortunate accident that Adams's 



190 THE CIVIL WAR 

letter of the 5th crossed in the mails a further 
note from the foreign office stating that the 
rams had been seized. Lord Russell was 
trying to do both the friendly and the legal 
thing, and had reached, finally, the conclusion 
that it was better to err on the side of cau- 
tion, if at all. After this episode, there was 
no more fear of recognition of the Confed- 
eracy by either England or France. Up till 
July, Napoleon III had been trying to prod 
the English cabinet to a mediation or a 
recognition, but the news of Gettysburg and 
Vicksburg changed the aspect of events, and 
removed the positive dangers of European 
interference. The growth of middle-class 
sympathy worked for the creation of a 
positive friendship. 

The distribution of strength between the 
Union and the South, which showed its 
proportions in the critical year, 1863, was 
based on population, wealth, and improved 
opportunity. The long contest between 
Washington and Richmond shows clearly 
that the North did not win because of superior 
valor or higher generalship. With ragged 
troops, for whom a victory often spelt rations 
and shoes, as well as glory, and whose num- 
bers were shrinking, Lee was standing off 
army after army. The numbers of his adver- 
sary had much to do with the result; his 
wealth had more to do with it. The key to 
the understanding of the war is to be found 
in the material resources of the contestants. 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 191 

In the eleven states which entered the 
Confederacy, excluding West Virginia, there 
were, in 1860, 1,200,000 men who came 
within the military ages of seventeen and 
fifty before 1865. Nearly all of these volun- 
teered, or were drafted into the army. It 
is a matter of pride throughout the South 
that there were few stay-at-homes. The 
materials do not exist for an accurate state- 
ment of the aggregate of enlistments, for the 
Confederacy was too hardly pressed to put 
much stress on formal records, and many 
of those that once existed have been de- 
stroyed. But the closest student of numbers 
and losses, Colonel Thomas L. Livermore, 
has estimated that the total of enlistments, 
for various terms, was quite as large as the 
total military population; while the period 
of service was equivalent to that of about 
1,000,000 men, serving each three years. In 
the Union armies, it is known that over 
2,800,000 men enlisted, equivalent, on the 
three-year basis, to 1,500,000. The Confed- 
eracy gave a larger proportion of its men to 
the ranks than did the North, yet it was 
outnumbered in the ratio of three to two. 

The enthusiasm with which the South sent 
this million to the front is commonly over- 
stated. After a year of war, voluntary en- 
listment fell away, in both sections. It 
was stimulated in the North for another 
year by cash bounties, which the South could 
not afford to duplicate. In April, 1862, the 



192 THE CIVIL WAR 

Confederacy was forced to fall back upon 
conscription, and during the next three 
years it developed an elaborate machine for 
drafting into the armies every available man 
between the ages of seventeen and fifty. The 
willingness of individuals to fight is no test 
of the popularity of any war. 

With its men on the firing-line, industry 
in the South would have stopped, had not 
its women taken the reins and its slaves 
stayed loyal. That class, which northern 
abolitionists regarded as downtrodden and 
oppressed, continued at work with a devo- 
tion and fidelity that are the best answers 
to those who deny it virtue or capacity. 
Cotton and tobacco continued to be planted 
and harvested. Food was always to be had. 
In Richmond, men with money could live 
well. But as the Union blockade tightened 
its grip on southern ports, and kept both the 
cotton in and the luxuries out, southern life 
was reduced to the lowest terms of mere 
necessities. It was made clear how com- 
pletely the old South had depended on the 
outside world, in its devotion to its staple 
products. Clothing grew simpler and plainer 
until it became threadbare. The family 
silver remained, to decorate pork, corn-pone, 
and potatoes. The sick suffered for the lack 
of delicacies, and medicines were to be had 
only when a successful blockade runner 
evaded the watchful Union gunboats. Even 
then, what medicines escaped impressment 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 193 

for the armies were too costly for general 
use. When the war was over, the southern 
states were worn out and demorahzed. What- 
ever broke down, remained unrepaired for 
the lack of labor and materials. The rail- 
ways, worn under heavy traffic, could not be 
renewed. Machinery stood idle for the lack 
of single parts. Even had the men remained 
at home, the blockade would ultimately 
have reduced the South. 

The cost of slave labor and the exploita- 
tion of restricted crops was paid when the 
South needed all its strength, and found it 
limited. Never had the old South possessed 
the capital for industrial development. Its 
railways were built on money borrowed 
north or abroad. Every planter who was 
successful found himself obliged to keep 
reinvesting his profits in land and slaves, and 
had no surplus for general investment. In 
its incapacity either to borrow from its citi- 
zens, or to tax them, the Confederacy proved 
the weakness of the plantation system. 

War, after all is said, is chiefly a matter of 
finance. Upon the shoulders of C. G. Mem- 
minger. Confederate secretary of the treas- 
ury, fell the burden of finding, somewhere, 
the means for maintaining the army in fight- 
ing trim. The first miscalculation was funda- 
mental: cotton had been relied on as capital, 
but when the blockade became effective, and 
Europe failed to intervene to break it, this 
resource collapsed, for the South could neither 



194 THE CIVIL WAR 

eat nor manufacture its staple product. 
There are only two means of raising money- 
known to governments; these are loans and 
taxes. In the long run, taxes are the sole 
reliance, for nations, like persons, cannot 
continue permanently to consume more than 
they produce; for short periods, however, 
the public debt may supplement the tax. 

Heavy taxation was urged by Memminger, 
early in 1861, as needed both for revenue 
and to solidify the government. He was 
blocked by the fact that one of the chief 
subordinate motives of secession was the 
only method of taxation which the United 
States had found effective. Rarely had the 
United States raised funds by direct taxa- 
tion; it had instead relied upon the easily 
collected tariffs, levied upon goods imported. 
Against a tariff for protection the South had 
long contended; it did not know how to 
levy one purely for revenue; and, had it 
known how, any tariff would have been 
reduced in value because the blockade was 
effective in excluding from Confederate ports 
those imports on which it could be collected. 
The tariff bill that was finally passed imitated 
the last Democratic tariffs of the United States, 
and produced during the Civil War about 
$1,000,000 in specie. The Union armies 
often consumed thrice as much in a single 
day. 

Internal taxes, alone, were left, and these 
were reduced in their effectiveness by both 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 195 

the legal system of the Confederacy, and its 
economic condition. Dreading heavy taxa- 
tion, says Schwab, the able historian of Con- 
federate finance, the Congress started, in 
1861, with a direct tax of one-half of one 
per cent on all the property in the Confed- 
eracy. If all of this had been collected in 
coin, it would have produced $21,000,000; 
but some of it was never paid, and most of 
it was avoided by the people. Tender of 
state susceptibilities. Congress had allowed 
the states to pay their quotas directly, and 
then reimburse themselves by taxing their 
citizens. Most of them borrowed the money 
to pay their quotas, thus avoiding the taxa- 
tion. Only a willingness to pay the cost can 
justify a revolution; or the ability to pay, 
make it succeed. Here the Confederacy 
imposed upon posterity as much of the cost 
of the war as it could. But even if it had 
been disposed to submit to heavy direct 
taxes, the South had little ready money with 
which to pay, and after the loss of its cotton 
market could not hope to raise large sums. 
Taxation soon broke down, and the govern- 
ment accepted payments in kind, in cotton 
bales, or agricultural produce. It fed as 
much of the latter to the troops as possible, 
and stored the former in government ware- 
houses, hoping for a happy accident that 
would enable it to ship the bales to European 
mills. Once in a while, a cargo succeeded in 
dodging the blockade, and commanded a 



196 THE CIVIL WAR 

famine price abroad, but the total return was 
slight. Schwab thinks the total Confederate 
revenue, from taxation of all kinds, was 
equivalent to about $100,000,000, in specie. 

Borrowing was tried when taxation failed. 
Bonds of the Confederate States were au- 
thorized in 1861, and were sold at home 
and abroad. At home they realized some 
$15,000,000, in gold, and abroad, especially 
in England and France, they were readily 
disposed of. The foreign loan had a face 
value of £2,500,000, but netted for the Con- 
federacy not over $6,250,000. Counting in 
all the sources from which the government 
obtained coin, the most important being the 
fifteen-million loan, the foreign loan, and 
seizures from United States depositories in 
the South, Schwab estimates that in the 
whole four years, not over $27,000,000 
found its way into the Confederate treasury. 

Voluntary loans and taxation played an 
insignificant part in the Confederate war. 
Forced loans, which took the form of an 
irredeemable paper money, were the chief 
reliance. Before the attack on Fort Sumter, 
the issue of promissory notes was begun, 
and before the end of the first year, these 
constituted nearly eighty per cent of the 
total indebtedness. Confederate notes be- 
came the ordinary currency of the South, 
and declined in value, steadily, as the war 
progressed. For a few months, only, did 
patriotic enthusiasm keep them at par. Their 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 197 

increasing flood was swollen by the issues of 
states, cities, banks, and individuals, until it 
is impossible to tell, even roughly, the total 
amount afloat. There is reason to believe 
that in crises the oflficials of government 
issued unauthorized millions to tide over 
emergencies. The value of this currency is 
more easily learned than its volume. Gas 
at fifty dollars a thousand is reported, and 
flour at three hundred dollars a barrel. In 
the month of Vicksburg, a gold dollar would 
buy nine dollars in Confederate paper; it 
would buy twenty a year later; in March, 
1865, it would exchange for sixty-one. 

The public finances of the United States 
stand out in glaring contrast to those of the 
Confederacy. Like the seceding states, the 
Union resorted to taxation, to voluntary 
loans, and to paper currency, but the amounts 
of these, all of which were ultimately main- 
tained at par, showed a credit which the 
southern leaders had not anticipated. Con- 
gress raised by taxation, in the four years 
ending in 1865, $667,000,000; it was able to 
increase the bonded debt by $2,140,000,000; 
it circulated $458,000,000 in promissory 
notes. During these four years, the treasury 
paid out over $3,300,000,000. There are no 
figures of Confederate expenditure to put 
beside these; if there were, the deprecia- 
tion of the currency would make their in- 
terpretation a fiscal puzzle. The total of 
$27,000,000, in specie, which Schwab believes 



198 THE CIVIL WAR 

the southern treasury received, suggests, 
but does not really afford, a comparison. 

The average annual expenditure of the 
United States in the five years before the 
war was under $67,000,000; in the next 
four years, it was over $800,000,000, while 
the duty of directing the transition to this 
twelve-fold increase was entrusted by Lin- 
coln to the Ohio lawyer, Salmon Portland 
Chase. Prior to the war, nearly the whole 
revenue came from the protective tariff, and 
there had been no internal revenue since the 
War of 1812. The belief of Congress that the 
new war was not to be protracted, made it 
reluctant to impose unpopular taxes on the 
North. There was a new protective tariff, 
bearing the name of Morrill, of Vermont, 
passed in the closing days of Buchanan's ad- 
ministration, and still untried when Congress 
convened, on July 4, 1861, for its first war 
session. The internal and income taxes, 
levied at this session, did not become effec- 
tive until the second year of the war, netting 
by the summer of 1863 only $40,000,000. 
But Congress learned much about taxation 
and the willingness of the North to pay. In 
the last year of war, the internal revenue 
produced $209,000,000. In successive acts. 
Congress laid a tax wherever it could find 
"an article, a product, a trade, a profession, 
or a source of income;" stamps of the 
internal revenue were stuck wherever a 
place large enough to hold them could be 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 199 

found. The North paid them all without 
distress. 

The receipts from the tariff were soon 
equalled and outdone by the internal revenue. 
The Morrill act was revised in 1862 and 
1864, partly to secure larger revenue, and 
partly to protect the heavily taxed Ameri- 
can manufacturer from foreign competition. 
From all sources, the taxation of the four 
years amounted to $667,000,000, while the 
fourth year produced nearly six times as 
much as the first. ^ ' 

Neither the North nor the South had, in 
1861, a currency equal to the stress which 
was placed upon it. There was no national 
bank, and even the coined money issued by 
the United States was insufficient. Federal 
officers, with large disbursements to make, 
occasionally had to wait at the mints, while 
the money was being manufactured. The 
deficiency in money was provided for by 
some sixteen hundred state or private banks, 
which, without restraint or uniformity, sup- 
pHed paper notes for their immediate com- 
munities. They professed to redeem these 
in gold, on demand, but their reserves were 
too little, even in time of peace. They sus- 
pended specie payment before the end of 
1861, while the public treasury, forced to 
suspend also, early in 1862, faced insolvency. 
In February, 1862, Congress authorized the 
issue of $150,000,000 legal tender notes to 
replace the coin, as well as to constitute an 



200 THE CIVIL WAR 

indirect loan. In later acts, the " greenbacks," 
as the notes were called, and the fractional 
notes, or " shinplasters," reached a total of 
$458,000,000. There were no irregular issues 
and Congress never lost control of its paper 
money; but enough was floated to add to the 
derangement of the currency, and to inflict 
an unfair portion of the cost of the war on 
those least able to bear it. 

After a few months, the greenbacks fell 
below par, and their value in gold became a 
barometer of Union hopes and fears. At 
their lowest, in the summer of 1864, they 
dropped to thirty-nine cents on the dollar, 
but generally they were worth from sixty 
to eighty cents in gold, and always they 
remained a better currency than the Con- 
federate notes. Their fluctuations, however, 
served to raise prices, and to increase a 
burden upon wage or salary earners which 
traders and speculators could avoid. Their 
necessity v/ill always be debatable; a more 
honest course would have been for the 
treasury to shoulder the loss, and raise public 
money by selling United States bonds at 
their market price. 

The paper money was a small fraction of 
the total debt of $2,600,000,000 created dur- 
ing the Civil War. Four-fifths of the ex- 
penditures were met by borrowing, and the 
sale of bonds was the constant occupation 
of the treasury. Chase borrowed from the 
banks, from day to day, during much of 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 201 

1861. Later he appointed scores of agents 
throughout the country to help dispose of 
bonds, but only one of these helped him 
much. This one, Jay Cooke, a young Phila- 
delphia banker, became the principal reliance 
of the treasury as the war progressed, devis- 
ing means of distributing the bonds quite 
as picturesque as most of the military cam- 
paigns, and much more effective. 

Jay Cooke rose to fame by selling at par 
$3,000,000 of Pennsylvania bonds that con- 
servative bankers had declared unsaleable. 
Appointed agent by the governor of the state, 
he visited banks and individuals, appealed 
to their patriotism, and cheered or shamed 
them into contributions. "I took care," 
he said, "to have this patriotic subscrip- 
tion, giving the names and amounts of all 
the subscribers, noticed in the newspapers 
of the country." He sent a copy of the list 
to Jefferson Davis for his discouragement. 
Unlimited enthusiasm, coupled with a shrewd 
regard for the value of printers' ink, helped 
Cooke in his task. He knew that, over all the 
country, large sums of coin were in seclu- 
sion, in old stockings or strong boxes, waiting 
to be coaxed out by the person who could 
convince the owners that the United States 
was safe. He sent his agents everywhere, 
advertised in the local journals, patronized 
the religious weeklies, and appealed to the 
loyalty and interest of the small investor. 
He sent ducks and wine, from his Ohio 



202 THE CIVIL WAR 

home, to writers of financial news. He 
pledged his faith that the government was 
good. His biographer tells of farmers com- 
ing down to Philadelphia to pay their gold 
to him in person. Repeatedly, his competi- 
tors charged favoritism, for he was close to 
Chase, and was a backer of Senator Sherman 
of Ohio; but as often as other banking houses 
tried to place the bonds, Cooke overbid 
them, and made better bargains for the gov- 
ernment. Without his zeal in popularizing 
investment in government funds, it is hard 
to see how the loans of the Civil War could 
have been placed. 

No efforts of Chase or Cooke, no bravery, 
no loyalty to the Union could have given 
the United States $3,300,000,000 to spend 
in four years if the nation had not been 
sound, financially. Outnumbering the white 
population of the Confederacy four to one, 
there was even greater discrepancy in wealth. 
The 2,800,000 enlistments from the North 
were the equivalent of 1,500,000 men serving 
for three years. To produce this number 
was no special strain. Nearly a third of 
the northern troops were foreign-born, and 
180,000 of them were negroes, enlisted mostly 
in the South. Few families, relatively, were 
stranded with their wage-earners in the 
ranks, for over two million of the enlistments 
were twenty-one and under, more than a 
million being only eighteen years of age. 

At the beginning of 1861 even sanguine 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 203 

northerners would not have beheved a 
prophet foretelHng the story of the next four 
years. The panic of 1857 still depressed 
private industry and produced a deficit in 
the national treasury. The political panic 
of the autumn of 1860, caused by the cessa- 
tion of trade between the sections, further 
unsettled business conditions. But the North 
and West, as Fite has clearly shown, were on 
the verge of a financial revival that all would 
have noticed had not the confusion of poli- 
tics concealed it. 

States had been built up solidly to the 
western border of Missouri before the war. 
Their population had moved in under the 
constant incentive of cheap and fertile lands, 
and had been specially stimulated every 
time a financial panic depressed the East. 
After the panic of 1857, the emigration swelled 
once more, carrying its tide into the North- 
west. Ohio and Indiana had been the great 
grain fields of the Union; Illinois and Wis- 
consin now took their place, with Iowa and 
Missouri pushing up behind, and Minne- 
sota coming into importance. To meet the 
needs of this newest West, Congress revised 
the land laws once more. It passed the 
homestead law, admitting that he who cleared 
a farm in the wilderness was a public bene- 
factor, and giving free title to residents who 
improved and cultivated quarter sections 
of the public lands. 

Free lands, as well as fertile, turned men 



204 THE CIVIL WAR 

to the agricultural West in the early sixties, 
with such eagerness that tempting bounties 
could not persuade them to enlist. The 
great demand of Europe for American wheat 
held up the price. Quick fortunes invited 
speculation, and agricultural machinery en- 
larged the effectiveness of the individual 
worker. Science in agriculture began to 
ensure his crop against failure. A growing 
railway mileage brought new areas, as great 
and rich as European kingdoms, within the 
reach of hungry markets. 

Two-thirds of all the American railways 
in 1860 were in the North and West, and 
amounted roughly to 20,000 miles. Their 
western extremities touched the Mississippi 
at many places, and had reached the Mis- 
souri River at St. Joseph. To these, the next 
ten years added 23,000 miles, few of which 
were built within the South. The improve- 
ment in service rendered by the larger mile- 
age brought independence of river transpor- 
tation to nearly all the North. When the 
Mississippi was closed to navigation early 
in the war, the Northwest suffered; but 
when it was reopened in 1863, the old traffic 
would not return, for the eastern railroads 
had come to serve it better. Progress toward 
a standard gage, and consolidation of the 
little roads of the early railroad era, made 
shipments cheaper and more convenient. 
New bridges replaced old ferries, while many 
of the roads began to build themselves double 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 205 

tracks, and to think in terms of steel instead 
of iron. 

Expanding manufactures consumed the 
increased raw products of the farms. Cin- 
cinnati lost "forever to its rival on the Lakes 
the proud title *Porkopolis of the West.'" 
In a single year, Chicago doubled the capa- 
city of her packing houses, and before the 
war was over she slaughtered 900,000 hogs 
and 90,000 cattle. The scarcity of cotton 
increased the use of wool, bringing heavier 
business to the woollen mills, while the 
revisions of the tariff helped further to aug- 
ment the profits of their owners. The use 
of elaborate machines became more common, 
making possible the creation of shoe and 
clothing factories. In 1865, the North alone 
patented more inventions than the whole 
United States had produced in 1860. 

Taxation failed even to check the indus- 
trial and commercial revival. In no period 
before the war had the North worked so 
hard, or laid the foundations of so many 
new interests. With an enlarged market 
created by the railways and the new 
telegraphs, individuals lost some of their 
identity and became merged in corporate ex- 
istence. Boards of Trade sprang into life to 
promote city competition. Stock companies 
consolidated individual producers. The rail- 
roads merged for the obvious reasons of 
larger profits and improved service. The 
Western Union consolidated scores of rival 



206 THE CIVIL WAR 

lines, extended its wires to the Pacific, and 
divided the business of the continent with the 
American Telegraph Company. Uniformity 
and standardization of national life could not 
have come before the perfection of transpor- 
tation by rail; it was forced to come immedi- 
ately thereafter, and the Civil War neither 
hastened nor retarded its advance. 

Lincoln, at Gettysburg, had spoken of the 
"new nation" of 1776. In a truer sense 
there was a new nation coming into life 
through the industrial expansion after the 
panic of 1857. Agriculture, transportation, 
and manufactures tended to create it; while 
the development of the Far West gave it 
the width of the continent to occupy. 

The extension of agriculture to the western 
border of Missouri had occurred a generation 
before the Civil War. To the west of this 
frontier, the Great American Desert, as it 
was misnamed, interposed its barrier, half 
a continent in width, between the settle- 
ments and the Pacific. Before 1857, Cali- 
fornia and Oregon had been seen, appreciated, 
and settled, but the intervening plains and 
mountains remained a barrier to their incor- 
poration in the national life. After 1857, 
even this region began to yield a profit. 
The discovery of gold and silver in many 
parts of the Rocky Mountains began in 1858, 
and thereafter, in quick succession, hun- 
dreds of mining camps sprang into life to 
populate the desert, and reduce the unoc- 



THE BALANCE OF POWER 207 

cupied area of the United States. New 
territories were called for and granted, and 
one of them advanced to statehood before 
the war was over. Colorado and Nevada 
represented the discoveries in the Pike's 
Peak and Carson Valley regions; prospectors 
along Bill Williams Creek created Arizona; 
Idaho and Montana were the response to the 
demands of miners on the watersheds of the 
Missouri and Columbia. Out of the mines 
came gold to replenish the dwindling stock 
of the United States. Yet more significant, 
out of them came calls for government, for 
transportation, for free lands, for irrigation, 
for national activities, which, in the ensuing 
generation, changed the character of the 
United States. East or west, wherever the 
presence of the armies did not cast their 
blighting shadow, there was prosperity such 
as America had never known before the 
Civil War. 

Had the leaders of the South seen the 
facts that are visible to-day, there could have 
been no Civil War. The struggle to which 
they, waging it without success, gave wealth 
and lives that were not replaced for thirty 
years, was not even a hindrance to the 
normal development of the rest of the 
Union. But they had misunderstood their 
economic foundations, and had exaggerated 
the importance to the North of the setback 
of 1857, which they had escaped. The supe- 
rior strength of the North might have been 



208 THE CIVIL WAR 

ineffective, even with the co-operation of 
its improved transportation, if the South had 
been able to keep open its European connec- 
tions. It was the cotton crop on which the 
Confederacy staked its hope of success. The 
effective blockade and the equally effective 
diplomacy of the Union destroyed this 
reliance. In a prolonged contest, which 
could call forth "the last full measure of 
devotion," the superior wealth of the North 
had time to act, and there could be but one 
outcome. The resources of the South failed 
first. This result, visible after Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg, revealed to contemporaries 
the fact that the balance of power was with 
the Union. When Grant took hold, the end 
was only a matter of time, if the Republican 
party was retained in power. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE UNION PARTY 

The most important campaign of 1864 
was not fought by any of the armies of the 
United States, but was directed by Lincoln 
and his advisers in their attempt to secure 
popular approval of their conduct of the war. 
The presidential election of 1864 was affected 
by all of the losses and successes of the year. 
Grant's movements in the spring played 
into the hands of those critics who denounced 
the war as a failure; Sherman's victories of 
the autumn were needed to prove the oppo- 
site. Discarded generals, Fremont and Mc- 
Clellan, with political friends behind them, 
made trouble both within the RepubHcan 
party and outside it. So dubious was the 
outlook, and so significant its importance, 
that the administration dropped the name 
Republican and, appealing to the principle 
of loyalty alone, renamed their party Union. 

Two armies held the approach to the Con- 
federacy when U. S. Grant assumed control 
in the spring of 1864. Lee, on the right bank 
of the Rapidan, continued to stand watch 
over Richmond; while Johnston, who had 

209 



210 THE CIVIL WAR 

succeeded Bragg, faced northwest from Dal- 
ton, Georgia, to Chattanooga, where the 
forces of Sherman and Thomas were concen- 
trated. Between Lee and Johnston were the 
railways on which their suppHes depended, 
and in the Shenandoah Valley were these 
supplies. Detached bands of cavalry guarded 
their connections. 

Facing south, in a long curve from the 
capes of the Chesapeake to the Mississippi, 
were nearly twenty Union armies, which had 
never acted in co-operation before 1864. 
While in the West, Grant wondered why there 
was confusion in the East. The answer, 
which he learned in a few days at Washing- 
ton, determined him to leave Sherman in 
the division of the Mississippi, and take the 
eastern post himself. In a multitude of 
counsels there had been destruction. The 
armies near Washington had been inspected 
and criticized; every politician from Lin- 
coln down had become an amateur strate- 
gist, and, though their combined wisdom had 
contributed no important plan, they had 
interfered with and blocked many campaigns. 
"No one else could, probably, resist the 
pressure that would be brought to bear upon 
him to desist from his own plans and pursue 
others," Grant wrote in his "Memoirs." 
He still had to learn that, while pohtical 
interference had been vexatious, there was 
a greater obstacle to be overcome, — Robert 
E. Lee. On January 1, 1864, there were 



THE UNION PARTY 211 

860,000 men on the Union rolls, 481,000 on 
the Confederate. 

Early in May, the long Union line ad- 
vanced. Sherman, on the right with the 
three armies of the Tennessee, the Cumber- 
land, and the Ohio, curved in upon northern 
Georgia. Grant, directing the left, marched 
with Meade and the Army of the Potomac 
from Culpeper upon Richmond. Butler, 
moving up the James, was at the extreme 
Union left; while in the Shenandoah Valley 
and the Kanawha, Sigel and Crook completed 
the connection between the armies of the 
East and those of the West. It was a grand 
concentric movement which was to press the 
life out of the Confederacy. It took more 
men than the defence, because northern 
opinion would not allow ground, once gained, 
to be given up, or to be left unguarded. It 
relied upon the superior force of numbers, 
and hopes of a speedy peace ran high. 

Not all the generals under Grant were 
able to keep step in the main advance. Sigel 
failed ingloriously, and Butler was only 
partially successful. Grant was himself 
soon involved in the bloody intricacies of 
the Wilderness campaign. 

In the strip of country south of the Rapi- 
dan and north of the James, Grant tried, 
from May 5 to June 12, to dislodge or crush 
Lee. His army crossed the Rapidan on May 
4. On the next day, in the vicinity of the 
Wilderness Tavern, only a few miles from 



212 THE CIVIL WAR 

Chancellorsville, he found Lee obstructing 
his passage, and began to revise his judg- 
ment as to the extent of the resistance which 
he must overcome. It cost him 14,000 
troops to learn that he could not push his 
way through the Confederate army, head on. 

In less than a week. Grant was fighting 
again. This time he tried to turn Lee's 
flank, shifting his own front until it faced the 
Confederate right wing at Spottsylvania 
Court House, about ten miles southeast of 
the Wilderness, and a little further south- 
west of Fredericksburg. "But Lee, by acci- 
dent, beat us to Spottsylvania," he later 
wrote. An intercepting party was prevented 
by a forest fire from bivouacking on iJie 
night of May 7, and so made an unexpected 
forced march, establishing itself at Spottsyl- 
vania before the Union column arrived. For 
two weeks. Grant tried to push by Lee in this 
position. Twice he fought severe battles, 
losing 10,000 men. "I am satisfied the 
enemy are very shaky," he reported to 
Halleck; but though Grant's storm of bul- 
lets cut down trees in the forest, Lee refused 
to be dislodged. On May 20, Grant shifted 
still further to his left, to try another point. 

Cold Harbor, where next the armies met, 
is a cross-roads less than fifteen miles north- 
east of Richmond, and is near the battle- 
field where McClellan struggled during the 
Seven Days. As Grant moved toward it, 
trying to get around Lee's right, Lee moved 



THE UNION PARTY 213 

too; but on the last day of May, Sheridan 
seized and held it. Once more the two 
armies were lined up, and on the morning of 
June 3, Grant tried again to rush Lee off 
his feet. He lost 12,000 men without dis- 
lodging the enemy. "This assault cost us 
heavily, and was probably without benefit 
to compensate: but the enemy was not 
cheered by the occurrence sufficiently to 
induce him to take the offensive," was all 
the Union leader could say to justify the loss 
of life. 

After waiting at Cold Harbor for a week 
following the battle. Grant gave up as use- 
less his first plan of action. In three great 
engagements he had gained no permanent 
advantage beyond that of reducing the num- 
ber of the enemy. He could replace his dead 
and wounded with fresh men; every man 
now lost to the Confederate army meant a 
permanent diminution of its strength. But 
Lee had given him stalemate, as Dodge says. 
Grant's next device was begun at once. 
Boats were collected in the James River, 
while he began to shift his army from right 
to left, with the idea of crossing to the south 
bank of the James, and advancing on Rich- 
mond by way of Petersburg. Butler was 
already there, and the two armies were side 
by side on June 15. The chance to occupy 
Petersburg was missed, however, and until it 
was taken Richmond was safe. It lay twenty 
miles due south of Richmond, on the Appo- 



214 THE CIVIL WAR 

mattox, and was so fortified that a formal 
siege alone could reduce it. This Grant un- 
dertook in June, at the time when he and 
Lincoln had hoped that the long fight with 
Lee would have been over. 

While Grant was in the Wilderness, Lin- 
coln's political future was threatened by 
either his success or his defeat. In the latter 
event, the election of a Democrat in the 
autumn was the least of the dangers to be 
feared; while if Grant should destroy Lee 
it was not improbable that his name would 
carry the Republican convention off its 
feet, and make him President. No one knew 
his politics, but if he had taken Richmond, 
no one would greatly have cared. In the 
dark days of May and June, with the news- 
papers printing sheets of dead, as their 
names came in by thousands, the critics of 
the administration found many to listen to 
them. 

Within the Republican party there were 
groups discontented for opposite reasons, — 
because Lincoln was a tyrant, and because 
he was too rarely rigorous. He had failed 
to push the war, declared the latter group, 
and had removed able generals, Fremont 
for instance, for political reasons. His re- 
construction proclamation of 1863 was too 
lenient to "rebels," and showed the weakness 
of despair, rather than the generosity of the 
strong. At the other end of the party from 
these, were honest Republicans who approved 



THE UNION PARTY 215 

the war, but could not stand for all its 
incidents, who regretted the emancipation 
proclamation as showing a disposition to 
overstep the Constitution, who opposed the 
rigor with which criticism at the north was 
silenced by the strong hand of the army in 
defiance of the right of free speech and press. 

The conservative Republicans found a 
leader in Chase, who was willing, though 
sitting in the cabinet, to let himself be pushed 
for President against his chief. Querulous, 
and critical of Lincoln in small matters, he 
resigned twice, and each time allowed him- 
seK to be persuaded back. Greeley took him 
up for the presidential nomination, and in 
February, 1864, his friends put out a cir- 
cular which advertised his strong points and 
Lincoln's unfitness. The matter was ex- 
plained away, and Chase remained at the 
treasury; but when, in June, he resigned 
again, in another pet, Lincoln took him at 
his word, to his surprise. 

Fremont was the choice of the radical 
Republicans, who tried to force his nomin- 
ation by holding a preliminary convention 
of their own, at Cleveland, at the end of 
May. Their call denounced the "imbecile 
and vacillating" policy of Lincoln, and hoped 
to induce all the abolitionists to take up 
Fremont. When the President heard the 
details of the convention, he turned to his 
familiar Bible, and read to his secretaries 
I Samuel xxii, 2: "And every one that 



216 THE CIVIL WAR 

was in distress, and every one that was in 
debt, and every one that was discontented, 
gathered themselves unto him; and he be- 
came a captain over them: and there were 
with him about four hundred men." Before 
the election, even Fremont saw that he had 
no followers, and dropped out of the canvass. 

The Republican party, convening at Bal- 
timore, in June, asked no embarrassing ques- 
tions of any persons who chose to join with 
them. "We pledge ourselves as Union men 
... to do everything in our power to aid 
the government," their platform read. The 
minor movements, save that of Fremont, 
had run their course, and Lincoln's was the 
only name considered for the nomination. 
For vice-president there were various candi- 
dates, including Hamlin, already in office. 
The party proved its Union character by 
passing over Hamlin, and selecting the most 
notable war Democrat in the United States, 
Andrew Johnson, whose career in Tennessee 
had done much to break down distinctions 
between defenders of the Union. From the 
standpoint of reconstruction, it is interesting 
to note that if Tennessee was not a state, 
Johnson was ineligible as a candidate. 

More serious than the opposition within 
his party, was the Democratic attack upon 
Lincoln. The mildest of its weapons was the 
assertion that the war was a failure; that 
peace, with Union, was within Lincoln's 
reach if he chose to take it. It ought to have 



THE UNION PARTY 217 

been entirely clear, to men of honesty and 
reasonable information, that the one thing 
which Lincoln demanded, Union, was the 
sole condition which the Confederacy would 
not yield; that only conquest could break 
down the devotion of the South to inde- 
pendence. Yet Democrats persuaded them- 
selves of the opposite. They declared that 
Davis wanted peace, and the erratic Greeley 
was convinced of this in 1864. The asser- 
tion lost its effectiveness when Lincoln drew 
the charge, sending Greeley to Canada to 
treat with any one who thought he could 
end the war and save the Union. After this 
errand, Greeley ceased to talk of peace. 

Tyranny, and conspiracy to override the 
Constitution, were more serious charges in 
the mouth of the opposition, because they 
had numerous believers among the Repub- 
licans, as well. The United States had never 
encountered cases of treason and sedition on 
a large scale, and had had no experience in 
handling them. The Confederacy was to 
all intents a military dictatorship; in the 
Union the government had the Constitution 
always to consider. Under the Constitution, 
it was extremely difficult to convict of treason. 
There were no precedents to show how far 
the minority, in time of war, was to be al- 
lowed to obstruct the national purpose. Yet 
now, the minority showed its sympathy with 
the South by opposing war measures, by 
denouncing acts of government as illegal, and 



218 THE CIVIL WAR 

by giving secret aid directly to the Con- 
federacy. At times it seemed as though 
Democratic resistance would tie the hands 
of Lincoln, and let the Union be broken. 

Lincoln faced his opponents in the rear 
more boldly than even his adherents always 
approved. Early in the war, he suspended 
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in 
the North, on his own authority, in order 
that arrests that appeared necessary to him 
might not be nullified by the courts. The 
Constitution declares that "The Privilege 
of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be 
suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion 
or Invasion the public Safety may require 
it." But it does not say who shall suspend 
the writ. Lincoln took the responsibility 
as his own, and though Congress regarded 
the act as an usurpation of its own authority, 
it passed, in 1863, a law indemnifying him 
in case he had violated the Constitution, and 
enacted general rules for the suspension in 
the future. Lincoln disregarded these rules 
when he believed it expedient. 

There are no exact figures to show how 
many persons were arrested arbitrarily in 
the North during the crises of the war. The 
number ran into the thousands, and was 
increased by unauthorized acts of zealous 
subordinates and military commanders. 
Every conspiracy that was discovered, or 
secret society that was brought to light, 
seemed to the department commander on 



THE UNION PARTY 219 

the ground to need repression. The aggre- 
gate number of conspirators was large. Most 
numerous in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, 
they affected ritualistic organization, and 
drilled in secret, when they could. Their 
very numbers drew their teeth. So many 
Union spies were in their ranks that Lin- 
coln knew their plans as soon as they were 
formulated. They never had a close organ- 
ization, or were more than an aggravating 
nuisance. Their most serious influence was 
in slandering the public credit, dissuading 
enlistment, and encouraging desertion. The 
draft might not have been necessary but 
for them. More than 2500 deserters were 
returned to the ranks from Indianapolis, 
alone, in a single month in 1862. When the 
President was called upon to sign death 
warrants for desertion, he generally declined . 
the duty. Only 141 men were shot or hungT?{?^u^ 
for this crime throughout the war, and 
leniency increased the trouble. But Lin- 
coln made the excuse that has been more 
satisfactory to his fellow citizens than it was 
to the disciplinarians of the war department: 
"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier 
boy who deserts, while I must not touch a 
hair of a wily agitator who induces him to 
desert? ... I think that in such a case, 
to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is 
not only constitutional, but withal a great 
mercy." 

The most famous arbitrary arrest was that 



220 THE CIVIL WAR 

of Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio law- 
yer and journalist, who had represented 
his district in Congress since 1857. From 
the beginning of the war, Vallandigham 
denounced the usurpation of power by the 
President, and the wickedness of coercion. 
A brilliant speaker, with handsome figure 
and great courage, he led the most violent 
wing of the opposition. The term "copper- 
heads," which was bestowed upon his fol- 
lowers in reproach, they finally accepted 
with pride, and they wore the liberty-head, 
cut from the old copper cent, as an emblematic 
badge. "I am for peace," declared Vallan- 
digham. He protested against "an aggres- 
sive and invasive warfare;" but denied his 
desire to extend aid to the Confederacy. 
When Wade called him a traitor, he denied 
the charge and called its author "a liar, a 
scoundrel, and a coward." Through 1862, 
he fought the administration steadfastly. In 
the fall of that year, he lost his seat in 
Congress through a rearrangement of his 
district; but the military failures of the 
year, and the rebuke to Lincoln at the polls, 
encouraged him and others to keep up their 
opposition, and their assertions that peace, 
with Union, was within the reach of an 
honest administration. 

In May, 1863, Vallandigham was arrested 
at his home in Dayton, by order of the mili- 
tary governor commanding in Ohio, A. E. 
Burnside. The latter had recently drawn 



THE UNION PARTY 221 

the fire of the copperheads by proclaiming in 
a general order that "Treason, expressed or 
implied, will not be tolerated in this depart- 
ment." Vallandigham had led in denouncing 
the order. He was arrested by troops, denied 
a hearing on a writ of habeas corpus by the 
United States court, tried before a military 
tribunal at Cincinnati, and condemned to 
imprisonment. His alleged crime had been 
committed in a state where ordinary courts 
were in regular session. The utterances on 
which he was condemned were highly parti- 
san, but by no means traitorous. The 
action of the administration in his case, 
declared the Democratic governor of New 
York, Horatio Seymour, "will determine in 
the minds of more than one-haK of the 
people of the loyal States, whether this war 
is waged to put down rebelHon at the South, 
or to destroy free institutions at the North." 
Although he doubted the wisdom of the 
arrest of Vallandigham, Lincoln did not 
disallow the verdict in his trial. He whim- 
sically commuted the sentence from confine- 
ment to banishment within the Confederate 
lines, and ordered Vallandigham to be 
escorted thither under guard. Protesting 
all the way, and seeing none of the humor 
of the situation, the leader of the copper- 
heads was taken by way of Murfreesboro to 
the front, and abandoned, under a flag of truce, 
within the outer line of Confederate pickets. 
The case of Vallandigham marks the height 



THE CIVIL WAR 

and decline of the activities of the copper- 
heads. The disastrous year, 1862, convinced 
many that it was safe to fight the Union, and 
that Lincoln was tottering. It emboldened 
many to a freedom of speech that would have 
passed unnoticed in time of peace, but which 
now provoked the administration to a method 
of defence that sober lawyers have been 
reluctant to justify. If, however, the Con- 
stitution had been allowed to fall because of 
its own restrictions upon the freedom of its 
defenders, it would have been a sad commen- 
tary upon the effectiveness of popular govern- 
ment. 

Vallandigham in exile was more effective 
than Vallandigham at large. He left the 
Confederacy, and took up a residence at 
Windsor, in Ontario. His party nominated 
him for governor of Ohio in 1863, and he 
conducted his campaign from Canadian 
territory. The administration threw its 
whole influence into the campaign to defeat 
him, and both Unionists and copperheads 
were surprised when the final vote brought 
out a majority of more than 100,000 for his 
opponent. On the whole, the best antidote 
for the teachings of the copperheads was 
their own speech and actions. Vallandigham 
was released from his pose of martyr after 
the election, and was permitted to come home, 
unnoticed by the government. 

When the Democratic national conven- 
tion met at Chicago, in 1864, the spirit of 



THE UNION PARTY 223 

Vallandigham, who was a leading delegate, 
wrote the platform. It denounced the war 
as a failure and as unnecessary. It denounced, 
also, the violation of constitutional rights 
in the North; but it nominated for its can- 
didate General McClellan, whose letter of 
acceptance repudiated the most extreme 
charge, and pledged him to a vigorous pros- 
ecution of the war. The party went before 
the country with a platform designed to win 
votes from copperheads, and a candidate to 
win the support of loyal Democrats and 
critical Republicans. The lack of Union 
success in the fighting of the year brought 
the President to the extreme of discourage- 
ment, which he recorded in a memorandum 
on August 23, " . . .it seems exceedingly 
probable that this administration will not be 
re-elected." Ten days later his gloom was 
gone. On September 3, he proclaimed a day 
for national thanksgiving, while Seward 
was able to declare from the stump that 
"Sherman and Farragut have knocked the 
bottom out of the Chicago nominations." 

Sherman had begun to move in 1864 
when Grant's long line had started its crush- 
ing process on the Confederacy. His chief 
had kept fighting away through spring and 
summer, without making large gains. Grant 
had differed from Meade, and Hooker, and 
Burnside, and McClellan, mainly in his 
control of northern opinion and his elasticity, 
which sent him repeatedly against the enemy. 



224 THE CIVIL WAR 

There were no breathing spells in his cam- 
paign, but there were no distinctive victories. 
Sherman, on the other hand, continued the 
steady progress that Grant had begun at 
Cairo. "That we are now all to act on a 
common plan, converging on a common 
centre," he wrote to Grant, "looks like 
enlightened war." 

On May 5, as ordered, Sherman put his 
three armies in motion, about 110,000 strong, 
in a front twenty miles long, under Schofield, 
Thomas, and McPherson. There was only 
one way for him to advance into Georgia; 
this was along the line of the Western and 
Atlantic Railroad, running southeast, from 
Chattanooga to Atlanta, about one hundred 
and ten miles distant. He had prepared 
with care for his march, realizing that as his 
line of communications became longer his 
danger would increase. When his quarter- 
master at Nashville, his chief base, com- 
plained that he had too little rolling stock to 
haul one hundred and thirty carloads of 
food a day, he ordered him to seize, hold, and 
use, all cars and locomotives arriving from 
Louisville. When the president of the 
Louisville and Nashville Railroad remon- 
strated with him, on account of this, he told 
him to start a car ferry, and annex the rolling 
stock coming into Jeffersonville, Indiana, 
across the Ohio from Louisville. With this 
mongrel equipment, impressed as needed, 
he secured his food. 



THE UNION PARTY 225 

Johnston, opposing Sherman, and defend- 
ing every inch of the way, knew better than 
to fight except when he was sure to win. 
His losses could not be replaced, and he 
started with only 66,000 men. Until the last 
week in July, the campaign was a series of 
patient manoeuvres, of repeated entrenching 
of positions, and of heavy engagements, 
while Johnston gradually retired upon At- 
lanta. Every day that he delayed, increased 
the chance of a happy accident that might 
let him destroy Sherman; a defeat for him- 
self would open the road into Atlanta in a 
single afternoon. 

The Western and Atlantic Railroad, along 
which Sherman moved, winds a sinuous 
course through the mountains, from the Ten- 
nessee River to Atlanta. It ascends the 
valley of the Chickamauga River for about 
fifteen miles, then plunges across country, 
bridging the Etowah River, just north of 
Allatoona, and the Chattahoochee, a few 
miles before it enters Atlanta. Johnston, 
when the movement started, was at Dalton, 
thirty-odd miles from Chattanooga. He 
was manoeuvred out of this position, and 
out of Resaca, fifteen miles further south. 
The Union and Confederate outposts were 
tapping everywhere, but there was no deci- 
sive engagement until Johnston had retired 
behind the line of the Etowah, thirty-five 
miles from Atlanta. 

Between the Etowah and the Chatta-' 



226 THE CIVIL WAR 

hoochee, there was fighting during June. 
Sherman's men were gaining in confidence 
every week. They were now some eighty 
miles from Chattanooga, and nothing had 
happened to them. Every few days. Con- 
federate cavalry broke their railway, but 
Union repair gangs, with wrecking trains, 
had the gaps rebuilt almost before the raiders' 
hoof -prints had hardened in the mud. Their 
numbers were shrinking, as garrisons were 
posted to hold the line, but there were some 
new recruits and a consciousness that John- 
ston was losing more than they. For the 
last two weeks in June, there were numerous 
engagements in the vicinity of Marietta, 
Kenesaw Mountain, a victory for Johnston 
being the most notable. But whether John- 
ston won or not, Sherman's constant pressure 
kept him always retiring to the new earth- 
works which his gangs of slaves were ever 
throwing up for him in his rear. 

About July 1, Johnston was at the line of 
the Chattahoochee, the last he could hold 
before he retired into the entrenchments of 
Atlanta. Here, as before, Sherman's supe- 
rior strength drove him away. Occupying the 
Confederate attention with troops at the 
centre of the line, the Union forces massed 
other troops opposite Johnston's right wing, 
and, threatening to destroy it, compelled the 
whole to yield. By July 9, Johnston fell 
back behind the Chattahoochee; a few days 
later. Sherman crossed the river; yet a few 



THE UNION PARTY 227 

days, and Davis removed Johnston from 
command, on the ground that he had failed 
to check the Union advance. Hood suc- 
ceeded him with a fighting pohcy, instead 
of one of obstruction and delay. Since 
Sherman had been, for two months, vainly 
trying to induce Johnston to fight, the change 
of command was a rehef to him. 

By the end of July, after battles at Peach 
Tree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church, in 
which Hood gained no advantage to offset 
his heavy losses, Atlanta became the centre 
of the Confederate defence, while Sherman 
partially surrounded and invested it. The 
fate of Vicksburg might have been repeated 
here, had not Hood saved his army by 
decamping on September 2. The slow and 
sedate Thomas, when he heard the news, 
says Sherman, "snapped his fingers, whistled, 
and almost danced." 

The importance of Atlanta to the Con- 
federacy could hardly be overestimated. 
It was the only one of the better cities of the 
South that had not been endangered or 
disturbed by war, before 1864. Here the 
Confederate government had established 
cloth mills and uniform factories. Cotton 
was stored here in large quantities. Remote 
from what was regarded as possible Union 
attack, it was developed into the industrial 
centre of the seceding states. Sherman pro- 
posed to end this, and leave Atlanta, when 
the time came to go off on other business. 



228 THE CIVIL WAR 

useless as an agency of the Confederacy. 
On September 7, he notified Hood that all 
non-combatants residing there would be 
furnished transportation to the Confederate 
lines. No one was to be left to require a 
holding garrison; factories and public stores 
were to be destroyed. "If the people raise 
a howl against my barbarity and cruelty," 
he wrote to Halleck, "I will answer that war 
is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they 
want peace, they and their relatives must 
stop the war." The acrimonious discussion 
that Hood started against this step has not 
yet subsided, though military experts are 
disposed to believe that the measure was 
entirely justifiable. Georgia and the Shenan- 
doah Valley fed and clothed the armies of 
the Confederacy, yet the former had not 
seen war within her boundaries; she was now 
to learn, as Sherman wrote to Hood, that 
"War is cruelty." 

The news of the fall of Atlanta, coming 
after long discouragement over Petersburg, 
and after grave doubts whether Sherman was 
not himself to be lost, gave new heart to the 
administration, and probably re-elected Lin- 
coln. Two other notable events of the 
autumn re-enforced it, and destroyed Mc- 
Clellan's hope of gaining the election on a 
platform denouncing the Union armies as 
without success. 

All through the war, the navy was on sta- 
tion, off the blockaded ports, doing tedious 



THE UNION PARTY 229 

patrol duty that was enlivened only by the 
occasional chase of a blockade-runner, or 
brush with a privateer. One by one, most 
of the ports were taken and held, and the 
Confederate fleet afloat, always small, was 
gradually reduced. The notorious Alabama 
was caught off Cherbourg, on the coast of 
France, and sunk by the Kearsarge, after a 
striking naval duel. In August Farragut 
entered the harbor of Mobile, which was the 
last important Gulf port left to the Con- 
federacy, and won a victory that Lincoln 
coupled with the taking of Atlanta in his 
proclamation of thanksgiving. 

In the eastern field of the war, encourage- 
ment came as the presidential campaign 
advanced. While Grant was embedded before 
Petersburg, Lee tried once more the trick 
that had turned off McClellan's peninsular 
attack, and had frightened the North in two 
invasions. He sent Early into the Shenan- 
doah Valley, where that general again scared 
the national capital, but lost his chance to 
take it. He remained there through July 
and August, threatening the North, while 
his cavalry raided Maryland and burned 
Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania. No one 
seemed able to check him, until Grant deter- 
mined, once for all, to end the annoyance 
which had so often come by way of the 
Shenandoah Valley. 

Sheridan was detached from the Army of 
the Potomac in August, and sent into the 



230 THE CIVIL WAR 

Valley with a generous army. He ma- 
noeuvred carefully against Early, until in 
September, Grant allowed him to take the 
aggressive. On September 19 he fought Early 
at Winchester; three days later they met at 
Fisher's Hill; and on October 19 the battle 
of Cedar Creek "finished forever the Valley 
campaigns." Here it was that Sheridan 
made the ride that every schoolboy knows. 
He had driven the Confederate army out of 
the Valley, had carried off what military 
supplies he could use, and had burned the 
rest. Barns and mills went up in smoke, 
until the most fertile farms of the Con- 
federacy were devastated, and Lee was 
permanently deprived of one of his chief 
resources. 

After September 1, the prospects of Lin- 
coln brightened. His friends gained courage 
to reiterate their charges that McClellan's 
election would mean restoration of slavery 
and division of the Union. The President, 
discouraged at times, continued evenly on 
the course he had mapped out. He alienated 
Republican radicals by refusing their vin- 
dictive measures of reconstruction, he main- 
tained the draft, he did not, for fear of 
Democratic votes, weaken his efforts to sup- 
port Grant. In November he was elected for 
a second time, by a plurality that showed 
how many of his fellow citizens were not 
satisfied; 2,200,000 votes were cast among 
the states for him, 1,802,000 for McClellan. 



THE UNION PARTY 231 

Neither elation nor despondency changed 
his pace. The war, in his mind, was essen- 
tial, but the problems after peace were to 
be quite as great. Joy at the prospect of 
victory was tempered by sympathy for the 
citizens for whom his victory would mean 
grief and destruction. Some had professed 
to see in him a dictator and a tyrant. His- 
tory has found him the opposite, pursuing 
his way "with malice toward none, with 
charity for all, with firmness in the right, as 
God gives us to see the right." 



CHAPTER XII 

THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 

The end of the war was in sight when 
Lincoln was re-elected, and when he was 
inaugurated for the second time, the exact 
manner of the collapse of the Confederacy 
was the only uncertainty. The war in the 
East had become an actual siege of Rich- 
mond, with only one termination possible. 
In the West, the armies were still advancing, 
and were to continue their progress until Lee 
and Johnston should be seized, as it were by 
a gigantic pair of tongs. Grant on one claw, 
Sherman on the other. The winter of 1864- 
1865 did not interfere with the Union cam- 
paigns. It had taken Grant longer than he 
thought to "fight it out," but he would neither 
yield to discouragement nor relax his grip. 
One of his officers brought a spotted coach- 
dog into camp, promising to take it into 
Richmond, because "It is said to come from 
a long-lived breed." Continuous hammering 
until the last resistance was crushed had 
become the Union policy. 

Sherman did not remain long inactive 
in the fall of 1864. He knew that "an army 

232 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 233 

which had penetrated Georgia as far as 
Atlanta could not turn back," and, early 
in October, was begging Grant to let him 
send away his baggage, destroy the railroad 
in his rear, and strike out across country 
for Milledgeville and Savannah. "I can 
make this march, and make Georgia howl! " 
he wrote. He could both transfer his army to 
the coast, where it could operate in connec- 
tion with the fleet and the eastern armies, 
and strike a blow at the resources of the Con- 
federacy which would discourage it. The 
sooner every southerner was taught that 
the war could not succeed, and that its con- 
tinuance meant personal ruin, as well as 
ultimate defeat, the sooner Lee and John- 
ston's armies would melt away. For nearly 
a month Grant withheld his positive per- 
mission for the raid. He had had his mind 
set on Mobile for the next move. Sherman 
insisted that there was no enemy between 
him and the sea; but the rules of strategy 
have only criticism for a commander who 
abandons his base in the enemy's country, 
and marches away from the hostile army 
instead of toward it. 

The effect which this movement would 
have on the future of Atlanta, Chattanooga, 
and Nashville was considered before Sherman 
was allowed to start. Hood was already 
worrying the railroad, and Thomas had been 
sent back to Nashville, while the troops were 
distributed along the railroad behind Atlanta. 



234 THE CIVIL WAK. 

By the end of October it was seen that Hood 
was after Thomas, in the attempt to ruin 
Sherman by destroying his base. Sherman 
saw the time had come to let the base go, 
leave Hood in Thomas's hands, and start for 
the coast. On November 2, Grant gave his 
definite assent, and Sherman began to strip 
his force. The baggage, the sick, and the 
lukewarm were sent back to Chattanooga 
or Nashville; the picked men from the 
garrisons along the railroad were gathered 
at Atlanta; on November 12 the last tele- 
graph wire connecting Sherman with Wash- 
ington was broken, and four days later the 
army, 60,000 strong, and every man a selected 
veteran, marched out of Atlanta, chanting: 

"John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the 
grave. 
His soul is marching on! '* 

In December, Thomas justified the confidence 
placed in him by defeating Hood and taking 
nearly 4500 prisoners at Nashville. 

The stirring words of Sherman's marching 
song were not set to music until the raid was 
over, but they tell the story. It was a holi- 
day trip, with almost no opposition, in spite 
of the impassioned appeals of Beauregard that 
Georgia rise to annihilate the presumptuous 
invader. In four columns, foraging liberally 
upon the country, the troops advanced. A 
strip of the richest lands of Georgia, 

" Sixty miles in latitude — three hundred to the 
main," 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 235 

was left empty in their rear. In great variety, 
the food of the countryside was brought in 
by the "bummers," as the foragers were 
called; while the negroes, seeing the "Yanks" 
for the first time, followed in the rear of 
their deliverers. The song tells it all: 

"How the darkeys shouted when they heard the 

joyful sound! 

How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary 

found! 
How the sweet potatoes even started from the 
ground, 
While we were marching through Georgia.'* 

The populace suffered, and Sherman's 
name is still a mark for southern execration. 
In such a campaign it is not strange that 
private property was not always safe. Food 
and stock were fair prey; money, silver, 
trinkets, ought to have been let alone, and 
Sherman's orders gave no countenance to 
thefts of these. But with an army of hila- 
rious boys, as most of the " vetreans " yet were, 
operating in the enemy's country, with the 
irrepressible love of souvenirs that still 
marks the American youth and runs riot 
over street signs and hotel silver in every 
college town, a nice and proper discrimina- 
tion between materials of war and private 
property could not be maintained. The 
women of the country, however, had nothing 
worse to fear than the theft of their family 
spoons. The men did not know where they 
were going and did not care; Sherman car- 



236 THE CIVIL WAR 

ried the whole burden of responsibihty, 
knowing that if he failed his march "would 
be adjudged the wild adventure of a crazy 
fool." 

On December 13, Sherman reached the 
sea, whence he communicated with the fleet 
off-shore. Eight days later the garrison of 
Savannah ran a pontoon bridge across the 
Savannah River, and escaped into South 
Carolina, while the Union army entered the 
city the same day. The capture of the city 
came to Lincoln as a Christmas gift. Sher- 
man had found no dangers on the march, 
and had come into Savannah with a loss 
of under one thousand men. 

The Confederate arrangements of 1865 
were dictated by the news which Sherman 
sent out from Savannah. He had been 
authorized, on January 2, to continue his 
march to the north, and declared his inten- 
tion of heading for either Charleston, north 
along the coast, or Augusta, up the Savannah 
River. Wheeler and Wade Hampton, with 
their cavalry, were sent to head him off, 
while what was left of Hood's army, after 
Nashville, together with some militia, was 
collected in the Carolinas under "Joe" John- 
ston, who was now restored to active com- 
mand. In February, Sherman's army, still 
about 60,000 strong, left Savannah, not 
for either of the points announced, but on a 
course between them, for Columbia. 

This march was no picnic, as the march 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 237 

to Savannah had been. It crossed all the 
rivers and creeks flowing seaward; it found 
few roads and almost no bridges; everywhere, 
a desperate enemy obstructed the advance, 
while the incessant rains of early spring 
prepared bottomless quagmires for the bag- 
gage trains. On February 17, Hampton 
abandoned Columbia, the capital of his 
state, to Sherman, and in the confusion of 
occupation it was destroyed by fire, — 
probably started by drunken irregulars who 
disgraced both armies. That not all of 
Sherman's men were destructive is proved 
by the discovery of one of the Iowa troops, 
who, after standing guard over a stranger's 
chickens, was "in another room minding 
her baby" while she was visited by the 
commander. 

From Columbia the advance continued 
to Fayetteville, which Sherman entered on 
March 11. Charleston had fallen into the 
hands of the fleet without a battle, as soon 
as her railroad connections with the interior 
had been cut. On March 19, Sherman's 
advance ran into Johnston's whole army, 
making a stand near Goldsboro, and was 
temporarily stopped. He had reached the 
centre of North Carolina, four hundred and 
twenty-five miles from Savannah. Within 
the next few weeks Sherman and Grant 
ended the war. 

Grant's first campaign in Virginia had 
resulted in great losses in the Wilderness, in 



238 THE CIVIL WAR 

the spring of 1864, with no compensating 
gains. He had followed it at once with a 
second, an advance up the James River, 
in which Petersburg blocked and held him. 
With a tired army, cut in two by its losses, 
he began his siege. 

The importance of Petersburg to Rich- 
mond was greater than that of an outlying 
defensive fortress. It was a railroad centre 
of quite as much significance as the capital 
city. Five lines of track connected it with 
Richmond and City Point and Norfolk, on 
the James, with Goldsboro and Wilmington, 
to the south, and with Lynchburg, to the 
west. A large part of the supplies for Lee, 
from the south, passed through it; and sup- 
plies, by the summer of 1864, were coming 
to be of first importance to the Confederacy. 
Under the insistent pressure of Grant, Lee 
held a line thirty-five miles long, from a 
point north of Richmond to one south of 
Petersburg. The James protected his front 
on the left, the Appomattox covered his 
right. The Union armies confronting him 
were split by the James, below the junction 
of the Appomattox; Butler was north. 
Grant was south of the river. 

With smaller resources, but with a skill 
not surpassed by Grant, Lee turned off the 
attacks upon his position. In July, 1864, 
an attempt was made to mine the fortifica- 
tions of Petersburg, blow up a section of 
them, and carry the city by assault. The 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 239 

news of the mining reached the Confeder- 
ates, creating some of the nervousness that 
Grant counted on. But when the mine was 
exploded on July 30, the assault was mis- 
managed, and nearly three thousand were 
killed and wounded in the crater. In the next 
month the work of Early in the Valley in- 
duced Grant to detach Sheridan for the 
autumn campaign around Winchester. 

Through the rest of 1864, there were re- 
peated attempts to catch Lee napping, to 
break his thin line, to turn his flanks, or to 
destroy the railroads in his rear. But Sher- 
man, on the whole, was weakening him more 
than Grant. The fall of Atlanta in Septem- 
ber cost the Confederacy many of its existing 
supplies, and the hope of more. The march 
to the sea destroyed food and confidence; 
the news of burning barns and scattered 
families had a moral influence on the men of 
Lee's command. His soldiers deserted in 
large numbers to look after the families at 
home, and the people at home sheltered the 
deserters from the searching parties of the 
provost-marshals. The southern people tired 
of the war; if their opinion could have been 
registered, it would probably have stopped 
now; for Georgia was in almost open mutiny 
against the Richmond government, and 
North Carolina threatened to secede. But 
the Confederate leaders, who had revolted 
against a nationalized government, charging 
that it contemplated an attack against the 



240 THE CIVIL WAR 

existence of their states, carried on their war 
with a high hand. State rights in the South 
were not allowed to restrict the hand of gov- 
ernment. The Confederate supreme court 
was never created, to pass upon the legality 
of the acts of Davis and his secretaries, and 
until his administration was driven to flight, 
with its armies actually captured or dis- 
persed, the war had to go on. 

Early in 1865, Lee could see what Davis 
would not admit, that the fall of Petersburg 
and Richmond was only a matter of time. 
In desperation, they both listened to the 
astute Benjamin, secretary of state, who 
advised that slavery be abolished as a means 
of securing European aid, and that the ne- 
groes be armed to fight for independence. 
Lee advised that Richmond be abandoned, 
and that the government take refuge in the 
Blue Ridge, beyond Lynchburg, where a 
handful of troops could cover the mountain 
passes and maintain a resistance for an in- 
definite period. Neither of these plans was 
acted upon, and the new year opened with 
the defence of Richmond still the primary 
Confederate policy. 

After Sheridan's successes in the Valley, 
and Sherman's in the South, Grant was sure 
he could end the war in a single brief cam- 
paign. The net was tightening. Along the 
coast, the blockade was effective. There was 
no retreat to the south, with Sherman there. 
Savannah and Charleston under Union garri- 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 241 

sons, and Atlanta empty. To the north, 
there was only Grant's inevitable line, and 
the devastated Valley. Behind Lynchburg 
was the single way out, and toward this 
gap both commanders turned their attention. 

Grant's line, when he took the field after 
the winter rains (through which Sherman 
had grimly tramped), was a long crescent, 
extending from the Valley, where Sheridan 
remained until March, to Goldsboro, where 
Sherman arrived in the same month. His 
right wing of 1864 had become his left wing 
for the final struggle, after traversing Georgia, 
South Carolina, and North Carolina. Within 
his embrace lay both Lee and Johnston, now 
deprived of their food supplies from either 
the Valley or the southern interior. 

Sheridan was specially charged to look 
after Lynchburg, its railroad, and its canal, 
lest any of them should be used by Lee in his 
extremity. Like Lee, Grant realized the 
difficulties in driving an army out of the val- 
leys of the Blue Ridge. Sherman was left 
to watch and hold Johnston, for Grant did 
not want him in at the finish of Lee's army, 
being "very anxious to have the Eastern 
armies vanquish their old enemy who had 
so long resisted all their repeated and gallant 
attempts to subdue them or drive them from 
their capital." 

Lee had prepared for his escape by remov- 
ing his supplies from Richmond, along the 
railroad to Amelia Court House, half way to 



242 THE CIVIL WAR 

Lynchburg. Before he followed them, he 
tried once more to create confusion in the 
Union ranks by an assault. On March 24, he 
surprised and broke through the line, a little 
north of Petersburg, with a disastrous suc- 
cess, since his assaulting party got so far 
into the enemy's country that all were cap- 
tured the next morning, — a loss to Lee of 
nearly four thousand. 

The armies of the Potomac and the James 
moved out of their entrenchments on March 
29. Sheridan was with them, having com- 
pleted his work at the extreme right, and now 
led the advance to the south of Petersburg. 
At Dinwiddie Court House, on March 31, 
and at Five Forks, the next day, Lee resisted 
the advance; but when, on April 2, Peters- 
burg was taken by storm, he abandoned his 
position, and Richmond too, and started on 
his retreat. On Monday, April 3, Davis, his 
government, and his archives, were moved 
to Danville, the President still protesting 
his determination to "die in the last ditch." 
A few days more, and they were scattered in 
promiscuous flight. 

The fall of the Confederate capital demor- 
alized the North with indiscriminate rejoic- 
ing. At Washington, it degenerated into a 
debauch among the clerks. The churches 
held services of praise and thanksgiving. 
Whatever had been the disposition of in- 
dividuals while the outcome was in doubt, all 
were Unionists now, and read with joy the 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 243 

news that Davis was in flight, that Lincoln 
had visited the deserted Richmond, that 
Grant and Sheridan were hot on the trail of 
Lee's retreating army. 

The trail was short. Lee's stores, meagre 
at best, that had been collected in freight 
cars at Amelia Court House, had been 
hauled back to Richmond, through the 
anxiety of the civil officers to save themselves. 
Hungry and tired, his men dropped out of 
the ranks. Nearly 14,000 were captured 
during the first week in April. But Lee 
pushed on, between the valleys of the Appo- 
mattox and the James, until on April 8 he 
found Sheridan, "nimbler-footed" than him- 
self, heading him off at Appomattox Court 
House. 

On April 7, Grant had shifted "the re- 
sponsibility of any further effusion of blood" 
by calling upon Lee to surrender his Army 
of Northern Virginia. On the 9th, the gene- 
rals met in a residence near Appomattox 
Court House, Lee dignified, impassive, and 
resplendent in a new uniform. Grant in 
working clothes, a shabby fatigue blouse, 
without a sword; but the conqueror, in his 
diffidence, talked about old times and the 
Mexican War for half an hour, until Lee 
recalled him to the purpose of their meeting. 
The terms were simple, and as generous as 
Lincoln could have made them, — surrender 
of all, but no humiliation, the officers re- 
taining their side arms and riding away on 



244 THE CIVIL WAR 

their own horses, the men allowed to keep 
their horses to work their farms, and all fed 
at once by an army that turned its hostility 
into hospitality. Toward the end of April, 
Johnston surrendered to Sherman; Kirby 
Smith gave up his fragment of an army in 
the trans-Mississippi in May, and the war 
was over. 

The return of the victorious armies of the 
Union to the farm, the workshop, and the 
office, was as great a triumph as their con- 
quests had been. Nearly a million men were 
mustered out in 1865. As rapidly as Grant 
could direct it, the armies were brought 
back to the great camps around Washington. 
Here they were collected for one last march 
together, before they dispersed forever. On 
May 23 and 24, they paraded the length of 
Pennsylvania Avenue, in the midst of a 
great throng, with the President and their 
commanders on the reviewing stand. It 
was noticed by the observers that Sherman's 
troops were ragged and unkempt beyond the 
average. They had lived for nearly a year 
from hand to mouth. But they knew, and 
their leaders knew, that there probably had 
never been another sixty-thousand so tough 
and true, with so few weaklings among them. 

The officers who rode in the review, like 
the President who inspected them, were men 
whom none would have picked in 1861, as 
the probable leaders of the war. Scott was 
yet living, but in the retirement of old age; 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 245 

McClellan had no part in the triumph. A 
group of men, whose reputations had been 
won amidst the hardest knocks, had seized 
the tools of war and wielded them. In the 
rejoicings of the day, the men in uniform 
knew better than the shouters what their 
enemy had been, how to estimate his vir- 
tues, and what was the meaning of defeat. 

The Union remained intact after the great- 
est of civil wars. It had been proved that a 
republic can act efficiently, that a majority 
can rule, that a peaceful people can turn to 
war and conduct it with success. The Con- 
stitution, too, remained as it had been before 
the South tried to test its strength. The 
nation was on the eve of an industrial revolu- 
tion that was to bring its changes in the 
course of time; but a scheme of government 
that had outlived the Civil War was past all 
fear of destruction. 

The armies of Lee and Johnston returned 
to poverty and humiliation. For four years 
they had kept, with steady eye, the one end 
of independence before themselves. Every- 
thing they had or hoped for was staked upon 
it. They now went back to broken homes, to 
plundered farms, to nearly total devasta- 
tion. That they had brought these things 
upon themselves only deepens the pity. 
They were, moreover, going home in uncer- 
tainty as to what the future might have in 
-store for them, as people or as states. 

Lincoln had looked forward to this day of 



246 THE CIVIL WAR 

readjustment from the time when the Union 
forces wrenched the first bits of soil from the 
armies of the Confederacy. It was a conven- 
ient theory for him to assert that the people 
were deceived, that the Confederacy was a 
legal phantom, that when the people should 
return to their senses, and obey the law, they 
would be restored to the enjoyment of their 
rights as citizens. He had acted upon this 
theory in his dealings with Virginia, Ten- 
nessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and Con- 
gress had approved his course up to 1863. 
But as the war dragged on, and the full 
measure of Confederate determination was 
understood, Lincoln was left alone in his 
generosity. The men who actually fought, 
on either side, had little rancor in them. 
To-day, the keen analysis of history has 
shown that the South was helpless in the 
hand of destiny; the scientists have shown 
that the law of evolution preserves the higher 
type with relentless and extravagant cruelty. 
But in the North, the desire to find someone 
who could be punished crowded out the 
thoughts of compassion as well as those of 
wisdom. 

If only from practical considerations, econ- 
omy and expediency forbade retaliation. 
Peace always comes quickest after a civil 
war when the victors are generous to the 
vanquished. Lincoln knew this, and the 
tones of his second inaugural show that he 
intended to have no hand in the punishment 



THE CONFEDERATE COLLAPSE 247 

of leaders, or led, in the South. As he had 
turned every political tool which a profound 
politician knows to the maintenance of the 
Union, so he stood ready to turn them to the 
softening of the feelings of the North and 
Congress. 

On the night of April 14, while Washington 
and the North were still delirious over the 
collapse of the Confederacy, Lincoln was 
murdered by a fanatical actor. Booth by 
name, and the routine of the Constitution 
put in his place a Democrat, a southerner, 
and, far worse, a man of indomitable will 
and utter lack of tact. Andrew Johnson was 
the worst man who could have succeeded 
Lincoln, for he could not hope to act in har- 
mony with a Republican Congress, now that 
the binding issue of Union was no more. He 
took up the work where it had dropped, ap- 
pointed military governors for the southern 
states, and toward the end of May issued 
a proclamation that Lincoln had planned, 
offering a generous pardon, and stating the 
terms on which the loyal citizens of the South 
would be aided in restoring their state govern- 
ments. Probably Lincoln would have failed 
to carry Congress with him in this leniency; 
Johnson could never do it. But before Con- 
gress could meet or interfere, reconstruction, 
as Lincoln would have wished it, was well ad- 
vanced, and the Thirteenth Amendment, the 
legal child of emancipation, was being accepted 
by the states of the old Confederacy. 



248 THE CIVn. WAR 

What Congress did, and tried to do, does 
not belong to the history of the Civil War. 
That ends with the termination of resistance. 
How Johnson, in place of fighting "traitors" 
in the South, turned to fight them in Congress, 
how he relapsed into the strict-construction- 
ist Democracy of his early life, how Republi- 
cans repudiated and belabored him, belong 
to the unsavory story of Reconstruction. 
War had been bad enough for the South. In 
the North it had placed a premium on resolu- 
tion, narrow loyalty, intolerance, the vir- 
tues of war, every one of which was an 
obstacle to the return of peace. Northern 
revenge, in the guise of preservation of the 
dearly won Union, was worse than war for 
the South. Yet it was the logical result of 
the emotional outpouring which alone made 
it possible to save the nation, and of the 
secession which made that outpouring neces- 
sary. It is possible to show that the South 
was led into secession by causes which it 
could not control; yet it was led into an evil 
path. In the words of Grant, who was 
"depressed ... at the downfall of a foe who 
had fought so long and valiantly," the fact 
remains that the Confederate cause was "one 
of the worst for which a people ever fought, 
and one for which there was the least excuse." 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



The best account of the Civil War yet written is by James 
Ford Rhodes, in his History of the United States from the Com- 
promise of 1850 to the final Restoration of Home Rule at the 
South in 1877 (7 vols., 1906), and it is not likely that his 
work will be improved upon in impartiality, scholarship, or 
literary skill for many years. In A. B. Hart's co-operative 
American Nation (27 vols., 1904-1908), there are three small 
volumes which together give an excellent resume of the war, 
and admirable lists of books relating to special phases and 
single campaigns: F. E. Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 
J. K. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, J. K. Hosmer, Outcome of 
the Civil War. T. A. Dodge's A Bird's-Eye View of our Civil 
War (1883, and later editions), has long been the best and 
clearest purely military view of the struggle; it is, however, 
very brief, and may be supplemented by J. Formby's Ameri- 
can Civil War (1910, with a volume of maps), or the hand- 
book prepared for the British Staff College, Wood and 
Edmonds, History of the Civil War in the United States (1905). 

No contemporary account gives more picturesque detail 
than Horace Greeley's American Conflict (2 vols., 1866), 
which is still readable. Shortly after the restoration of peace, 
two Confederate leaders presented their views of the struggle: 
Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern- 
ment (2 vols., 1881), and A. H. Stephens, Constitutional View 
of the Late War between the States (2 vols., 1870). During 
the eighties, the Century Company collected the reminiscences 
of participants, and published them first serially, and then in 
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., 1888). These 
accounts possess all the charm of first hand narratives, but 
careful historians always check them up with the original 
correspondence that has been printed in the great United 
States Government series. Official Records of the Union and 
Confederate Armies and Navies in the War of the Rebellion 
(more than 150 volumes, and still growing). 

The biographical side of the Civil War is abimdantly sup- 
plied with memoirs, autobiography, and biography, among 
251 



252 THE CIVIL WAR 

which the greatest book is Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant 
(2 vols., 1886). This classic is followed closely in interest by 
Memoirs of William T. Sherman, by Himself (2 vols., 1875), 
and Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan (2 vols., 1888). 
G. B. McClellan's Own Story (1887) gives remarkable self- 
revelation upon the character of the writer, but acquits him of 
everything but egotism. An equally useful Confederate biog- 
raphy is Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Opera- 
tions (1874). 

Of formal biographies, the greatest is Nicolay and Hay, 
Abraham Lincoln, a History (10 vols., 1890), which is a monu- 
mental classic that has provided the foundation for the grow- 
ing posthumous reputation of Lincoln. It is not critical. It 
has been supplemented on the personal side by Ida M. Tar- 
bell's Life of Abraham Lincoln (4 vols., 1907), which gives a 
clearer view of Lincoln's human qualities than any other 
work. Among the lesser biographies, there should be noted, 
F. Bancroft, William H. Seward (2 vols., 1900), C. F. Adams, 
Charles Francis Adams (1900), A. B. Hart, Salmon P. Chase 
(1899), E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil 
War (2 vols., 1907), A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee 
(1887), G. F. R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the Amer- 
ican Civil War (2 vols., 1900, a professional soldier's view), 
W. E. Dodd, Jefferson Davis (1907, by a critical southern 
historian). 

The growing interest in sides of the Civil War period, other 
than the military, has recently produced two books of great 
value. J. C. Schwab's Confederate States of America (1901) 
gives an intimate view of the financial and industrial condition 
of the South from 1861 to 1865. E. D, Fite's Social and Indus- 
trial Conditions in the North During the Civil War (1910), 
shows the progress made by the Union in spite of war, and is 
a good corrective to the point of view of the military historians. 

For additional references, the reader should consult the 
bibliographies in Chadwick and Hosmer, above mentioned,, 
and J. N. Lamed, Literature of American History (a general 
bibliography printed in 1902, in which the leading scholar in 
the history of the war. General J. D. Cox, has appraised the 
books bearing on the Civil War). 



INDEX 



Abolition, 25 

Adams, C. F., 78-91, 186-190 
Adams, J. Q.. 107 
"Alabama," 87, 188, 229 
"Alexandra," 189 
Anmesty, 181, 247 
Anderson, 51 
Andrew, 61 
Antietam, 101 

Appomattox, C. H., 243-245 
Army, Confederate, 191, 211 
Army, U. S. Regular, 54 
Army, U. S. Volunteer, 61, 

64, 191, 202, 211 
Atlanta, 243-245 

Bancroft, 84 

Banks, 96, 98, 134 

Bates, 112 

Beauregard, 52, 66, 129, 234 

Bell, 32 

Benjamin, 240 

Blair, 112, 118 

Blockade, 72, 192, 229 

Booth, 247 

Border States, 67, 106, 117 

Bragg, 126, 135-137, 145. 155 

Breckenridge, 32 

Bright, 188 

British sympathy, 87, 186- 

190 
Buchanan, 27. 39, 43, 50 



Buckner, 122, 123, 146 

Buell, 119, 124 

Bulloch, 88 

Bull Run, 66, 81. 100 

Bumside, 102, 161 

Butler, 99, 105. 180, 211, 238 

Cairo, 115 
Calhoun, 12, 22 
Cameron, 48 
Causes, 1-24 
Cedar Creek, 230 
Chancellorsville, 164-165 
Chase, 29, 47, 112, 198, 215 
Chattahoochee, 226 
Chattanooga, 146-156 
Chickamauga, 146 
Cold Harbor, 212 
Columbia, 237 
Compensation, 106 
Confederate Government, 37, 

38,44 
Confiscation, 105, 109 
Constitutional Amendment, 

42 
Constitutional Convention, 

15,20 
Constitutional Law. 40. 74, 

175. 215 
"Contraband of War." 105 
Cooke, 201 
"Copperheads," 112, 219-222 



253 



254 



INDEX 



Cotton, 12-14, 59, 76, 208 
Corinth, 129, 135, 139 
Crook, 211 

Dallas, 77, 78 

Dana, 139 

Davis, 38, 53, 65, 78, 81, 96, 

117, 146, 227, 240, 242 
Dinwiddle, C. H., 242 
Donelson, Fort, 120-123 
Douglas, 30, 32, 46 

Dred Scott Case, 30 

Early, 229 

Economic development of 
North, 203-207 

Election of 1856, 27; of 1858, 
30; of 1860, 31, 103, 
113; of 1862, 113; of 
1864, 209-214, 223, 230 

Emancipation, 103, 104, 109- 
113 

Ezra Church, 227 

Farragut, 99, 229 

Finance, 193-203 

Fisher's HiU, 230 

Five Forks, 242 

Floyd, 122 

Foote, 122 

Foreign affairs, 72-91, 186- 

190 
Fox, 73 
France, 81 

Fredericksburg, 161-163 
Fremont, 27, 39. 64, 98. 104. 

118, 215 

Gettysburg, 167-173 
Gettysburg address, 184 



Gilpin, 133 
Gladstone, 90 
Goldsboro, 237 
Grafton, 68 

Grant, 120-133, 135-159. 
209-214, 229, 237-244 
Greeley, 108, 217 
Guerrilla warfare, 134 

Habeas Corpus, 218 
Halleck, 100, 118, 120, 123- 

125, 129. 143. 158 
Hampton, 236 
Hancock, 169 
Harper's Ferry, 63 
Henry, Fort, 120, 121 
Holly Springs, 141 
Hood, 227, 233 
Hooker, 153, 155. 158, 163- 

166 
Hunter, 104 

Inaugural addresses, 46, 231 
Island Number 10. 120. 124 
luka. 139 

Jackson, Miss., 144 
Jackson. 96, 97, 98, 164, 165 
Johnson, 174, 178-180, 247 
Johnston, A. S., 62, 119, 122. 

125, 126, 135, 147 
Johnston, J. E., 66, 142, 156, 

210, 225-227, 236 

Kansas-Nebraska. 26 
Kearsarge, 229 
Kenesaw Mountain, 226 
Knoxville, 150, 156 

Labor. 13, 22, 193 
Laird Brothers. 88^ 189 



INDEX 



^5 



Lee, 62, 96, 160-173, 209, 
238-243 

Lincoln, 29-32, 42, 44, 53, 64. 
80, 101, 104, 105, 108- 
113, 139, 158, 173-185, 
214-223, 230, 247 

Longstreet, 150, 156, 170 

Lookout Mountain, 154 

Lower South, 34; map, 36 

Lyon, 118 

Lyons, 84 

McCIeUan, 64, 68-70, 92-103, 
113, 128, 158, 223, 230 
McDoweU, 64, 66, 68, 96, 98 
McPherson, 224 
Magoffin, 119 
Mason, 81 

Manassas Junction, 66 
Meade, 166, 211 
Memminger, 193 
Missionary Ridge, 154 
Missouri Compromise, 26 
Monitor and Merrimac, 99 
Murfreesboro, 138 

Napoleon III, 190 
NashviUe, 233, 234 
Naval affairs, 72-76 
Neutrality, 79 
Neutrality of Kentucky, 64 
New Madrid, 124 
New York Tribune, 26 
Northwest, 18, 203 

Pabner, 47, 152 
Pahnerston, 78, 83, 84, 87, 

187 
Panic of 1857, 60, 203 
Peach Tree Creek, 227 



Pemberton, 140, 142, 144 

Peninsular campaign, 92-103 

Perryville, 137 

Petersburg, 213, 238-242 

Phelps, 180 

Pickett, 171 

Pierpont, 174 

Pillow, 122 

Pittsburg Landing, 126 

Plantation system, 14, 193 

Polk, 119, 147 

Pope, 100, 109, 124, 134 

Population, 55, 56, 191 

Porter, 142 

Price, 134, 178 

Prize cases, 76 

Quantrill, 134 

Raiboads, 19, 58, 116, 204; 

map of, 57 
Reconstruction, 173-185, 245- 

248 
Resignation of officials, 40 
Richmond, 242 
Rosecrans, 137, 146-149 
Russell, 78-89, 186-190 

Savannah, 233-236 
Schofield, 224 
Scott, 50, 63, 68 
Secession, 25-38, 41, 63 
Sectionalism, 17, 28 
Semmes, 89 

Seward, 29, 47, 77, 80, 85, 111 
Seymour, 221 
Sharpsburg, 101 
Shenandoah Valley, 97, 100, 

229 
Shepley, 180 



256 



INDEX 



Sheridan, 138, 153. 213, 229. 

240 
Sherman, 126, 140, 142, 150. 

154, 157, 210, 211. 

222-228, 233-237 
Shiloh, 126-128 
Sickles, 170 
Sigel, 211 
Sioux War, 134 
Slaves, 22, 56 
SUdeU, 81 
Spottsylvania, 212 
Stanton, 48, 112, 149 
"Star of the West," 51 
Stevens, 70, 176 
Stone's River, 138 
Sumter, Fort, 49-52, 60 

Thomas, 148-152. 155. 224. 
234 



"Trent" affair. 82-87 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin." 29 

Vallandigham, 221 
Van Dom, 136, 138 
Vicksburg, 140-145 

Webster, 12, 23 

Welles, 72 

West Point, 62 

West Virginia, 68, 173-175 

Westward movement, 16 

Wheeler, 236 

WigfaU, 52 

Wilderness, 211 

Wilkes, 82 

Wilson's Creek. 118 

Winchester, 230 



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25. THE CIVIL WAR (1854:1865). By Frederick L. 
Paxson, Professor of American History, University of 
Wisconsin. 

39. RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION (1865-1912). 
By Paul Leland Haworth. A History of the United 
States in our own times. 

47. THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1607-1766). By 
Charles McLean Andrews, Professor of American His- 
tory, Yale. 

67. FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN (1815-1860). 
By William MacDonald, Professor of History, Brown 
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82. THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMER- 
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period, with especial emphasis on The Revolution and The 
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GENERAL HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 

3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Hilaire Belloc, 
M.A. 

4. A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE. 

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8. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr. W. S. Bruce, 

leader of the "Scotia" expedition. Emphasizes the results 
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13. MEDIEVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C. Davis, Late 
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author of "Charlemagne," etc. 

18. THE OPENING UP OF AFRICA. By Sir H. H. 
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20. HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885-1911). By C. P. 
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Monarchy," etc. The story of the rise and fall of the 
Temporal Power. 

26. THE DAWN OF HISTORY. By J. L. Myres, 
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30. ROME. By W. Warde Fowler, author of "Social Life 
at Rome," etc. 

33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By A. F. Pol- 
lard, F.B.A., D.Litt., Professor of English History, 
University of London. 

34. CANADA. By A. G. Bradley. 

36. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA. By Sir 
T. W. Holderness, G.C.B. "The best small treatise 
dealing with the range of subjects fairly indicated by the 
title."— The Dial. 

51. MASTER MARINERS. By John R. Spears, author 
of "The History of Our Navy," etc. A history of sea- 
craft adventure from the earliest times. 



57. NAPOLEON. By The Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, 

Warden of New College, Oxford. Author of "The Re- 
publican Tradition in Europe." 

72. GERMANY OF TO-DAY. By Charles Tower. 

76. THE OCEAN. A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE 
SCIENCE OF THE SEA. By Sir John Murray, 
K.C.B., Naturalist H. M. S. "Challenger," 1872-1876, 
joint author of "The Depths of tlie Ocean," etc. 

78. LATIN AMERICA. By William R. Shepherd, Pro- 
fessor of History, Columbia. With maps. The historical, 
artistic and commercial development of the Central South 
American republics. 

84. THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By Granville A. J. 

Cole, Professor of Geology, Royal College of Science, 
Ireland. A study of the geology and physical geography 
in connection with the political geography. 

86. EXPLORATION OF THE ALPS. By Arnold 
Lunn, M.A. 

92. THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. Hogarth, M.A., 
F.B.A., F.S.A. Connects with Prof. Myres's "Dawn of 
History" (No. 26) at about 1000 B.C. and reviews the 
history of Assyria, Babylon, Cilicia, Persia and Macedonia. 

94. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER. By David Han- 
nay, author of "Short History of the Royal Navy," etc. 
A brief history of the navies, sea power, and ship growth 
of all nations, including the rise and decline of America on 
the sea, and explaining the present British supremacy. 

95. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. Ensor, sometime Scholar o; 
Balliol College. The geographical, linguistic, historicaij 
artistic and literary associations. 

100. POLAND. By J. Alison Phillips, Lecky Professor of 
Modern History, University of Dublin. The history of 
Poland with special emphasis upon the Polish question of 
the present day. 

102. SERBIA. By L. F. Waring, with preface by J. M. 
Jovanovitch, Serbian Minister to Great Britain. The 
main outlines of Serbian history, with special emphasis on 
the immediate causes of the war and the questions in the 
after-the-war settlement. 

104. OUR FORERUNNERS. By M. C. Burkitt, M.A., 
F.S.A. A comprehensive study of the beginnings of man- 
kind and the culture of the prehistoric era. 



105. COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY. By Dr. Marion I. 
Newbigin, F.R.G.S., D.Sc. Fundamental conceptions of 
commodities, transport and market. 

io8. WALES. By W. Watkin Davies, M.A., F.R. Hist. 

S., Barrister-at-Law, author of "How to Read History," 
etc. 

no. EGYPT. By Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Litt.D., 
F.S.A. 

114. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By Norman H. 
Baynes, M.A. The period from the recognition of Chris- 
tianity by the state to the date when the Latin sovereigns 
supplanted the Byzantines. 

120. ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS AND THE 
STUARTS. By Keith Feiling, M.A. The period of 
Transition from 1485 to 1688. 

121. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1688-1815). By E. M. 
WRONG, M.A. A continuation and development of Mr. 
Feiling's "England Under the Tudors and the Stuarts." 

127. THE CIVILIZATION OF JAPAN. By J. Ingram 
Bryan, M.A., M.Litt., Ph.L., Extension Lecturer for the 
University of Cambridge in Japanese History and Civili- 
zation. A brief sketch of the origins and developments of 
Japanese civilization. 

128. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1815-1918). By Dr. J. 
R. M. Butler. Gives a vivid impression of the chief 
ways in which English life was transformed in the cen- 
tury between Waterloo and the Armistice and of the 
forces which caused the transformation. 

129. THE BRITISH EMPIRE. By Basil Williams, 

Professor of History at Edinburgh University. Sketches 
the growth of the British Empire from the times of the 
early adventurers to the present day. 

137. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT 
WAR. By Ramsay Muir, formerly Professor of Mod- 
ern History in the University of Manchester. 

141. FASCISM. By Major J. S. Barnes, F.R.G.S., late 
Secretary-General of the International Center of Fascist 
Studies, Lausanne. 

LITERATURE AND ART 

2. SHAKESPEARE. By John Masefield, D.Litt. "One 
of the very few indispensable adjuncts to a Shakespearian 
Library." — Boston Transcript. 



27. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By G. H. 

Mair. From Wyatt and Surrey to Synge and Yeats. 
"One of the best of this great series." — Chicago Evening 
Post. 

31. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE. By 

Lytton Strachey, Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
"It is difficult to imagine how a better account of French 
Literature could be given in 250 pages." — London Times. 

38. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W. R. Lethaby. An 

introduction to the history and theory of the art of 
building. 

40. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By L. P. Smith. A 

concise history of its origin and development. 

45. MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE. By W. P. 
Ker, Professor of English Literature, University College, 
London. "One of the soundest scholars. His style is ef- 
fective, simple, yet never dry." — The Athenaeum. 

48. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA. By W. P. 
Trent and John Erskine, Columbia University. 

58. THE NEWSPAPER. By G. Binney Dibblee. The 

first full account from the inside of newspaper organiza- 
tion as it exists today. 

59. DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE. By John 
Bailey. Johnson's life, character, works and friendships 
are surveyed ; and there is a notable vindication of the 
"Genius of Boswell." 

61. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. By 
G. K. Chesterton. 

62. PAINTERS AND PAINTING. By Sir Frederick 
Wedmore. With 16 half-tone illustrations. 

64. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By Profes- 
sor J. G. Robertson, M.A., B.Sc. 

66. WRITING ENGLISH PROSE. By William T. 

Brewster, Professor of English, Columbia University. 
"Should be put into the hands of every man who is be- 
ginning to write and of every teacher of English who has 
brains enough to understand sense." — New York Sun. 

70. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Jane E. Har- 
rison, LL.D., D.Litt. "One of the 100 most important 
books of 1913." — New York Times Review. 

73. EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE. By Gilbert Murray, 

Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford. 



75. SHELLEY, GODWIN AND THEIR CIRCLE. By 

H. N. Brailsford. The influence of the French Revolu- 
tion on England. 

8i. CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. By Grace E. 
Hadow, Lecturer Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; Late 
Reader, Bryn Mawr. 

83. WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLU- 
ENCE. By A. Clutton Brock, author of "Shelley: 
The Man and the Poet." William Morris believed that 
the artist should toil for love of his work rather than the 
gain of his employer, and so he turned from making 
works of art to remaking society." 

87. THE RENAISSANCE. By Edith Sichel, author of 
"Catherine de Medici," "Men and Women of the French 
Renaissance." 

89. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By The Rt. 
Hon. J. M. Robertson, M.P., author of "Montaigne and 
Shakespeare," "Modern Humanists." 

93. AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By 
The Hon. Maurice Baring, author of "The Russian 
People," etc. Tolstoi, Tourgenieflf, Dostoieffsky, Pushkin 
(the father of Russian Literature), Saltykov (the satir- 
ist), Leskov, and many other authors. 

97. MILTON. By John Bailey. 

loi. DANTE. By Jefferson B. Fletcher, Columbia Uni- 
versity. An interpretation of Dante and his teaching from 
his writings. 

106. PATRIOTISM IN LITERATURE. By John 
Drinkwater. 

109. MUSIC. By Sir W. H. Hadow, D.Mus., F.R.S.L., 
F.R.C.M., Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. 

117. DRAMA. By Ashley Dukes. The nature and varie- 
ties of drama and the factors that make up the theatre, 
from dramatist to audience. 

132. THE LITERATURE OF JAPAN. By J. Ingram 
Bryan, M.A., M.Litt., Ph.D., Extension Lecturer for the 
University of Cambridge in Japanese History and Civili- 
zation. 

134. AN ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POETRY: 
Wyatt to Dryden. By Kathleen Campbell. 

135. AN ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POETRY: Dry- 
den to Blake. By Kathleen Campbell. 



NATURAL SCIENCE 

9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS. By Dr. D. H. 
Scott, LL.D., F.R.S., President of the Linnean Society 
of London. The story of the development of flowering 
plants, from the earliest zoological times, unlocked from 
technical language. 
12. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By Prof. F. W. Gamble, 
F.R.S. 

14. EVOLUTION. By Prof. Sir J. Arthur Thomson 
and Prof. Patrick Geddes. Explains to the layman 
what the title means to the scientific world. 

15. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS. By Pro- 
fessor A. N. Whitehead, D.Sc, F.R.S., author of "Uni- 
versal Algebra." 

17. CRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr. C. A. Mercier, 
F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., author of "Crime and Criminals," 
etc. 

21. AN INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE. By Prof. 
Sir J. Arthur Thomson, LL.D., Science Editor of the 
Home University Library. For those unacquainted with 
the scientific volumes in the series this should prove an 
excellent introduction. 

23. ASTRONOMY. By A. R. Hinks, Chief Assistant at 
the Cambridge Observatory. "Decidedly original in sub- 
stance, and the most readable and informative little book 
on modern astronomy we have seen for a long time." — ■ 
Nature. 

24. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Sir W. F. Barrett, 
F.R.S., formerly President of the Society for Psychical 
Research. 

37. ANTHROPOLOGY. By R. R. Marett, D.Sc, 
F.R.A.I., Reader in Social Anthropology, Oxford. Seeks 
to plot out and sum up the general series of changes, 
bodily and mental, undergone by man in the course of his- 
tory. "Excellent. So enthusiastic, so clear and witty, and 
so well adapted to the general reader." — American Library 
Association Booklist. 

41. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR. 
By Professor William McDougall, F.R.S., Reader in 
Mental Philosophy, Oxford University. A well-digested 
summary of the essentials of the science put in excellent 
literary form by a leading authority. 

42. THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof. 
J. G. McKendrick. A compact statement by the 
Emeritus Professor at Glasgow, for uninstructed readers. 



43. MATTER AND ENERGY. By F. Soddy, F.R.S., 

Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry in the 
University of Oxford. "Brilliant. Can hardly be sur- 
passed. Sure to attract attention." — New York Sun. 

53. ELECTRICITY. By Gisbert Kapp, Late Professor 
of Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham. 

54. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By J. W. 
Gregory, F.R.S., Professor of Geology, Glasgow Uni- 
versity. 38 maps and figures. Describes the origin of the 
earth, the formation and changes of its surface and struc- 
ture, its geological history, the first appearance of life, 
and its influence upon the globe. 

56. MAN: A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY. 
By Sir A. Keith, F.R.S., Hunterian Professor, Royal 
College of Surgeons of England. Shows how the human 
body developed. 

63. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. By Pro- 
fessor Benjamin Moore. 

68. DISEASE AND ITS CAUSES. By W. T. Council- 
man, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Pathology, Harvard 
University. 

71. PLANT LIFE. By Sir J. B. Farmer, D.Sc, F.R.S., 

Professor of Botany in the Imperial College of Science, 
London. This very fully illustrated volume contains an 
account of the salient features of plant form and function. 

74. NERVES. By David Fraser Harris, M.D., Professor 
of Physiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax. Explains 
in nontechnical language the place and powers of the 
nervous system. 

85. SEX. By Profs. Sir J. Arthur Thomson and Patrick 
Geddes, joint authors of "The Evolution of Sex." 

90. CHEMISTRY. By Raphael Meldola, F.R.S., Late 
Professor of Chemistry, Finsbury Technical College. 
Revised by Alexander Findlay, D.Sc, F.I.C., Profes- 
sor of Chemistry in the University of Aberdeen. Pre- 
sents the way in which the science has developed and the 
stage it has reached. 

107. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
HEREDITY. By E. W. MacBride, D.Sc, Professor 
of Zoology in the Imperial College of Science and Tech- 
nology, London. 

III. BIOLOGY. By Profs. Sir J. Arthur Thomson and 
Patrick Geddes. 



112. BACTERIOLOGY. By Prof. Carl H. Browning, 
F.R.S. 

115. MICROSCOPY. By Robert M. Neill, Aberdeen Uni- 
versity. Microscopic technique subordinated to results of 
investigation and their value to man. 

116. EUGENICS. By Professor A. M. Carr-Saunders. 

Biological problems, together with the facts and theories 
of heredity. 

119. GAS AND GASES. By R. M. Caven, D.Sc, F.I.C., 

Professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry in the 
Royal Technical College, Glasgow. The chemical and 
physical nature of gases, both in their scientific and his- 
torical aspects. 

122. BIRDS, AN INTRODUCTION TO ORNITHOL- 
OGY. By A. L. Thompson, O.B.E., D.Sc. A general 
account of the characteristics, mainly of habit and be- 
havior of birds. 

124. SUNSHINE AND HEALTH. By Ronald Campbell 
Macfie, M.B.C.M., LL.D. Light and its relation to man 
treated scientifically. 

125. INSECTS. By Frank Balfour-Browne, F.R.S.E., 

Professor of Entomology in the Imperial College of 
Science and Technology, London. 

126. TREES. By Dr. MacGregor Skene, D.Sc, F.L.S. 

Senior Lecturer on Botany, Bristol University. A concise 
study of the classification, history, structure, architecture, 
growth, enemies, care and protection of trees. Forestry 
and economics are also discussed. 
138. THE LIFE OF THE CELL. By David Lands- 
borough Thomson, B.Sc, Ph.D., Lecturer in Biochem- 
istry, McGill University. 

142. VOLCANOES. By G. W. Tyrrell, A.R., C.Sc, 
Ph.D., F.G.S., F.R.S.E., Lecturer in Geology in the 
University of Glasgow. 

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 

35. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. By The 
Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S., Lecturer and Late Fel- 
low, Trinity College, Cambridge. 

44. BUDDHISM. By Mrs. Rhys Davids, Lecturer on 
Indian Philosophy, Manchester. 

46. ENGLISH SECTS: A HISTORY OF NONCON- 
FORMITY. By The Rev. W. B. Selbie, Principal of 
Mansfield College, Oxford. 



50. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
By B. W. Bacon, D.D., LL.D., Professor of New Tes- 
tament Criticism, Yale. An authoritative summary of the 
results of modern critical research with regard to the 
origins of the New Testament. 

52. ETHICS. By Professor G. E. Moore, D.Litt., Lec- 
turer in Moral Science, Cambridge. Discusses what is 
right and what is wrong, and the whys and wherefores. 

55. MISSIONS: THEIR RISE AND DEVELOP- 
MENT. By Mrs. Mandell Creighton, author of "His- 
tory of England." The author seeks to prove that mis- 
sions have done more to civilize the world than any other 
human agency. 

60. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. Estlin 
Carpenter, LL.D. "One of the few authorities on this 
subject compares all the religions to see what they have to 
offer on the great themes of religion." — Christian Work 
and Evangelist. 

65. THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTA- 
MENT. By George F. Moore, Professor of the His- 
tory of Religion, Harvard University. "A popular work 
of the highest order. Will be profitable to anybody who 
cares enough about Bible study to read a serious book on 
the subject." — American Journal of Theology. 

69. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By 

John B. Bury, M.A., LL.D., Late Regius Professor of 
Modern History in Cambridge University. Summarizes 
the history of the long struggle between authority and 
reason and of the emergence of the principle that coercion 
of opinion is a mistake. 

88. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN OLD 
AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By The Ven. R. H. 
Charles, D.D., F.B.A., Canon of Westminster. Shows 
how religious and ethical thought between 180 B.C. and 
100 A.D. grew naturally into that of the New Testament. 

96. A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By Professor 
Clement C. J. Webb, F.B.A. 

130. JESUS OF NAZARETH. By The Rt. Rev. Charles 
Gore, D.D., formerly Bishop of Oxford. 



SOCIAL SCIENCE 

I. PARLIAMENT. ITS HISTORY, CONSTITU- 
TION, AND PRACTICE. By Sir Courtenay P. 
Ilbert, G.C.B., K.C.S.I., late Clerk of the House of 
Commons. 

5. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By F. W. Hirst, for- 
merly Editor of the London Economist. Reveals to the 
nonfinancial mind the facts about investment, speculation, 
and the other terms which the title suggests. 

6. IRISH NATIpNALITY. By Mrs. J. R. Green, 
D.Litt. A brilliant account of the genius and mission of 
the Irish people. "An entrancing work, and I would ad- 
vise everyone with a drop of Irish blood in his veins or a 
vein of Irish sympathy in his heart to read it." — New 
York Tivves Review. (Revised Edition, 1929.) 

10. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. By The Rt. 
Hon. J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P, 

11. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH. By J. A. Hobson, 
author of "Problems of Poverty." A study of the struc- 
ture and working of the modern business world. 

16. LIBERALISM. By Prof. L. T. Hobhouse, LL.D., 
author of ''Democracy and Reaction." A masterly phil- 
osophical and historical review of the subject. 

28. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY. By D. H. 
MacGregor, Drummond Professor in Political Economy, 
University of Oxford. An outline of the recent changes 
that have given us the present conditions of the working 
classes and the principles involved. 

29. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW. By W. M. 
Geldart, B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law, 
Oxford. Revised by Sir William Holdsworth, K.C., 
D.C.L., LL.D., Vinerian Professor of English Law, Uni- 
versity of Oxford. A simple statement of the basic prin- 
ciples of the English legal system on which that of the 
United States is based. 

32. THE SCHOOL: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
STUDY OF EDUCATION. By J. J. Findlay, M.A., 
formerly Professor of Education, Manchester. Presents 
the history, the psychological basis, and the theory of the 
school with a rare power of summary and suggestion. 

49. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By 
Sir S. J. Chapman, late Professor of Political Economy 
and Dean of Faculty of Commerce and Administration, 
University of Manchester. 



77. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING. 
By Aneurin Williams, late Chairman, Executive Com- 
mittee, International Co-operative Alliance, etc. Explains 
the various types of co-partnership and profit-sharing, and 
gives details of the arrangements now in force in many of 
the great industries. 

79. UNEMPLOYMENT. By A. C. Pigou, M.A., Pro- 
fessor of Political Economy at Cambridge. The meaning, 
measurement, distribution and effects of unemployment, 
its relation to wages, trade fluctuations and disputes, and 
some proposals of remedy or relief. 

80. COMMON SENSE IN LAW. By Prof. Sir Paul 
Vinogradoff, D.C.L., LL.D. Social and Legal Rules — 
Legal Rights and Duties — Facts and Acts in Law — Legis- 
lation — Custom — Judicial Precedents — Equity — The Law 
of Nature. 

91. THE NEGRO. By W. E. Burghardt DuBois, author 
of "Souls of Black Folks," etc. A history of the black 
man in Africa, America and elsewhere. 

98. POLITICAL THOUGHT: FROM HERBERT 
SPENCER TO THE PRESENT DAY. By Pro- 
fessor Ernest Barker, D.Litt., LL.D. 

99. POLITICAL THOUGHT: THE UTILITARIANS. 
FROM BENTHAM TO J. S. MILL. By Professor 
William L. Davidson, LL.D. 

103. ENGLISH POLITICAL THOUGHT. From Locke 
to Bentham. By Harold J. Laski, Professor of Politi- 
cal Science in the London School of Economics. 

113. ADVERTISING. By Sir Charles Higham. 

118. BANKING. By Dr. Walter Leaf, late President, In- 
stitute of Bankers; President, International Chamber of 
Commerce. The elaborate machinery of the financing of 
industry. 

123. COMMUNISM. By Harold J. Laski, Professor of 
Political Science at the University of London. The author 
tries to state the communist "theses" in such a way that 
even its advocates will recognize that an opponent can 
summarize them fairly. 

131. INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Edited by Dr. 
Charles S. Myers, G.B.E., F.R.S., Director of the Na- 
tional Institute of Industrial Psychology in England. The 
only comprehensive study of the human factor in industry. 

133. THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL 
THOUGHT. By F. Melian Stawell. 



139. LIQUOR CONTROL. By George E. G. Catlin. 

An impartial and comprehensive study of the subject. 

140. RACES OF AFRICA. By C. G. Seligman, F.R.C.P., 
F.R.S. 



